


The Trap I Set for You

by gamerfic



Series: In Sleep [8]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Adventure, Angst, Breakup Sex, Canon-Typical Violence, Dialogue Heavy, Dreamsharing, F/M, Fade Tongue, Lucid Dreaming, Minor canon divergence, Moving On, POV First Person, Post-Break Up, The Fade, Well of Sorrows, descriptions of injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 10:12:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4872868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamerfic/pseuds/gamerfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Solas always warned Lavellan about the dangers of the Fade. Perhaps he should have taken his own advice. On the eve of the Inquisition's final battle with Corypheus, Lavellan and Solas must work together to escape from a difficult situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wrath of Heaven

Solas woke me up in the middle of the night, clamoring up the stairs to my quarters as if an army of demons were pursuing him. I surfaced abruptly from hazy dreams and groped instinctively for the sword I always kept next to my bed. "Hush, _ma vhenan_ , it's only me," he said. I heard the familiar rustle of his hands moving swiftly to shape a simple spell. The torches flared to life in the wall sconces to cast a flickering yellow glow across my rumpled bedclothes, my too-large bedroom, and Solas's own troubled visage.

I sat up in bed, blinking in confusion. Something seemed wrong. "Since when do you call me _ma vhenan_ again?" I asked in a voice still thick with sleep.

"Since I realized that I have made a terrible mistake." Solas sat down next to me. "Our time grows short. Any day now, we will confront Corypheus for the last time."

"I know that." After our most recent encounter in the Fade, Solas and I had come to some sort of understanding. We managed to be friendly around Skyhold and on the road while still maintaining enough distance to allow each of us to define our life without the other in it. I'd thought I'd put an end to the sort of overly dramatic middle-of-the-night visits that had once been so common in our relationship. Receiving one again right now was the last thing I needed. "I'm supposed to meet with the advisors in the morning to discuss our strategy. Can we make this quick so I can get back to sleep? I don't think Cullen will appreciate it if I have to take a nap on the war table."

He glanced away from me, ashamed - which gave me my first clue to the real purpose of his visit. " _Ir abelas._ I should not have woken you, or intruded on your bedchamber. There are so many things I should not have done. I can't wait any longer to start making up for them." He let out a deep, shaky sigh. "And so I have come to you tonight to apologize, and to do what I can to make it right."

Like it or not, I was fully awake now. I pushed my blankets off to the side and slid closer to Solas on the mattress. How many times had I imagined the moment in which he would come back to me? In some of my fantasies we reconciled, and in others I rejected him, but in all of them I demanded the answers he had promised me over and over before I made my choice. I was not about to lose sight of that desire now. I regarded him with what I hoped was a firm and decisive expression and said, "I'm listening."

"There are so many excuses I could make - so many explanations I could offer to mitigate your opinion of me. But I know none of that truly matters to you. What matters is that I abandoned you when you needed me the most. I lied by omission. I did not tell you all of what I knew. I treated you poorly, and I am sorry." He sighed again. "I have lived a long time. I have done many things that I regret. The way that I have treated you is only one of them. For so long I have wanted to give myself completely to you, even knowing what it would mean. The truth is, I was frightened. What if I told you everything I have hidden from you and you could not accept it - could not accept _me_? So I pushed you away instead of being honest with you, and at the time when you most deserved a real answer. And I have now been without you for long enough to know that this state of affairs is intolerable to me. I can't do this anymore, _ma sa'lath_. I can't take the risk of facing our enemies, knowing either one of us might die, with so much left unsaid between us. I know I don't deserve it after everything I've done, but I have come to beg you to give me another chance."

I took his hand in mine, but hesitated. Solas was saying all the things I had always wanted to hear from him - and after everything I had been through since the explosion at the Conclave had changed the course of my life forever, I had learned to be suspicious of anything that sounded too good to be true. "You already know that I miss you, too," I said, trying to keep my voice steady. "But I can't be with you either if we have to lie to each other or to ourselves to make it work. If I forgive you, first you have to tell me the truth about everything you've been hiding. Starting with why you left me in that cave, and continuing from there. Even if you're afraid it will change my opinion of you. I can't make the right decisions if I don't have all the facts."

"Of course. I understand." Solas's eyes were wide and trusting, and I wanted so badly to believe him. "I promise you, I will. There is so much to say and not a word of it will be left unspoken. I only wish I knew where to begin. But before I do..." He lifted up my hand to kiss it, his lips barely skimming across my knuckles. His free hand slipped around into the small of my back, pulling me closer to him. "I don't know what will become of us in the battles to come. Please, _vhenan_. Before we must speak of these things, let me have you tonight."

I wasn't sure whether to consider that another disappointment, or exactly what I wanted to hear. All I knew was that when his mouth met mine, I didn't resist. The passion in his embrace astonished me. Of all the times that our bodies or our spirits had been joined in one way or another, none had ever felt like this. The difference nagged at me even as I clung to him with desperation that equaled his own. "This has to be a dream," I said, breathless, when he broke away to trail kisses along my neck.

"Of course it is," Solas said, his lips against my collarbone. "This is my dream, and I am honored to have you in it." In my peripheral vision, I saw him wave his hand again to dim the torches and kindle a sudden, roaring fire in the cooling embers of the fireplace.

I set my fingers against his jawline and gently pushed him away from me. The sense of wrongness that had clung to my perceptions ever since I first became aware of his presence flared again, as quickly and intensely as the flames in the hearth had grown. My mental shields, fueled by lyrium, crept up instinctively, chasing away some of the lust and confusion that I now realized had been fogging my thoughts. Now the changed light around us seemed harder-edged and unnatural, casting dark dramatic shadows across Solas's concerned face. "I haven't dreamed about you in weeks," I said. "You told me to stay out of your part of the Fade."

"I changed my mind," he said with a wry smile and a chuckle. "Is that so wrong?"

"That depends." I slipped out of his grip and put a little more space between us on the bed. The corners of his mouth settled back into a worried frown full of hurt and confusion. I didn't let it faze me. "At least tell me one thing, will you?"

"Yes. Anything."

"You remember that night in the ballroom, when we found that cache that Josephine was after, right?" He nodded. "Tell me again what you said to me when you put that necklace around my neck. Call me sentimental. I just want to hear it from you again."

"It's better if we leave the past behind us, don't you think?" And he reached out and _touched_ me - not with his hands but with his power, slick invasive tendrils probing at my mind and sliding off the shields I had so recently erected. I stared at him in disbelief. "Shit," he said in a voice that sounded nothing like his own. And then, as a better approximation of Solas: "I can explain this."

"Not necessary," I said. I stretched out my unmarked hand and felt my own power beginning to crackle around it, tingling like static across my skin. I didn't really know where it came from anymore, whether it was lyrium or the Maker or my own flawed gods or something else whose source I couldn't begin to guess at. All I knew was that when I reached up toward the heavens it was there, waiting to be called down. For the briefest moment, I held it back - what if I was wrong, and I was about to hurt Solas badly? - but then I reinforced my mental shields and reminded myself that I'd seen him walk away from far worse than this. He leapt up from the bed and began to flee toward the door, but it was too late. A blinding pillar of white light descended from somewhere beyond the ceiling, following the trajectory of my arm as I yanked it down toward the floor. It struck the ground with a deafening thunderclap that filled the air with the scent of incense and ozone and sent the now-clearly-false Solas sprawling on his back and skidding across the room.

I picked up my sword from its resting place next to the bed and lowered it into a guard stance; I couldn't see my shield anywhere nearby, which bothered me. The being that wore Solas's face writhed in the corner where it had come to rest, its features and body twisting and transforming into a horned, purple-skinned creature with curves and long limbs artfully arrayed in an exaggerated mockery of femininity. _Desire demon. That figures._ Alone, without armor or shield, I knew I stood no chance of defeating such a powerful entity. Of course, the demon didn't have to know that.

The demon levitated lazily up off the floor and turned to regard me with a cruel, amused smirk on its full lips. It was impossible to believe now that I had ever mistaken it for Solas. "Get the fuck out of my dream if you want to live," I said, trying to instill my words with a confidence I didn't feel.

"You presume much, templar," the demon said, rolling the last word around in its mouth. "This realm is mine, not yours, and I'm nowhere near finished with you yet. I'm going to enjoy corrupting you even more than I like playing with your wizard lover."

"You're welcome to try," I said, even as I thought, _My wizard lover? That means...Oh, shit_. I took a few steps toward the demon, brandishing my sword, and raised my other hand. The green energy of the mark crackled between my fingers. The demon shied away, clearly unwilling to test itself against a new and unknown power after I'd injured it once already. _It hasn't seen the Anchor before_ , I realized. That meant this was an attack of opportunity, rather than a direct incursion into Skyhold by Corypheus or another one of our known enemies. I wasn't sure if that made things better or worse.

"Threaten me all you like," said the demon with a sneer. "But neither you nor your lover is going anywhere until I'm finished with you. This could have been painless for you, templar, or even pleasurable. I hope you remember that when I come for you again." It twisted through the air in a languid backflip, then abruptly folded in on itself and vanished like a soap bubble popping.

I dropped my sword to the ground with a clatter, sank back down onto the edge of the bed, and let myself feel the terror I'd been suppressing. "Wake up," I told myself. "Get out of the Fade. You're not safe here." But no matter how hard I concentrated, nothing happened. I couldn't even sense my own sleeping body on the other side of the Veil. The demon had been telling the truth, then, when it claimed I was in its realm. I had never been in control here and never would be - and Solas wouldn't be, either.

 _Oh, gods, Solas. Tell me you aren't trapped here, too._ I allowed myself to entertain the possibility that the demon was lying, that it had only mentioned him in an attempt to goad me into making a mistake, but rejected the idea as far too improbable. Solas entered the Fade every night without fail, and explored it to an extent that would be unthinkable for me while deploying powers I would never possess. Although his unusual approach to interacting with spirits seemed to afford him some protection from their occasional attempts at trickery or temptation, he was still as obvious as a signal fire to anything in the Fade. If my own comparatively meager abilities had been enough to attract this demon's attention, there was no chance that he had escaped its notice. Was he already searching for a way out? Or was he lost in dreams and succumbing to the demon's scheme, still ignorant of the danger he was in?

 _Or maybe he's already escaped and left you to your fate_ , said a darker voice inside of me, but I resolutely set that fear aside. Despite our history, despite everything that had changed between us, I knew Solas wouldn't abandon me like that. That meant that he most likely needed my help - and even if I had been able to escape on my own, I was hardly prepared to abandon him, either. I picked up my sword from where it had landed. I still couldn't find my shield or my armor; the simple blade would have to be enough. Then I left my imagined bedroom behind and started out into the Fade, searching for an exit, searching for him.


	2. Mark of the Rift

The room in which the desire demon had initially tried to tempt me had been a believable enough approximation of my quarters, even after I had realized that I'd been in the Fade all along. It was only once I left it, walking down the darkened staircase into what should have been the main hall of Skyhold, that I saw how different this place was from the real thing. The walls of the false keep were somehow simultaneously too close and impossibly distant, and the geometry of the corners where they met the strangely tilted floor and half-destroyed roof was all wrong. The only sound came from the cold wind that whistled in from the flat void beyond the shattered windowpanes and through the ragged holes in the ceiling. I was utterly alone.

I moved slowly through the mockery that the demon had made of my home, opening doors that seemed to lead nowhere and meandering through twisting, bewildering hallways. _How did this happen?_ I wondered. _Why Solas and me? Why now?_ I searched my memories of our most recent interactions, trying to think of anything different or new that either of us might have said or done to attract the demon's notice, but came up with nothing. If anything, in recent weeks we had been calmer and more civil with each other than ever before - hardly the sort of behavior that might call out to a desire demon. I had even felt comfortable enough to ask him to accompany me again on some recent excursions to the Hissing Wastes and the Frostback Basin. Cassandra and Sera and some of the others had plainly disapproved, but they had never really trusted him anyway or known him the way that I did, and it had been easy for me to disregard their opinions. I was relieved not to have to avoid Solas any longer, to be able to rely upon him again for walls of ice and boulders that appeared from nowhere and barriers that still sprung up around me without fail at the first sign of trouble.

But even if we had been at odds - or worse yet, struggling against barely contained lust for each other - it still didn't make sense for a demon, even a powerful one, to be here now. The last thing I remembered was falling asleep in my quarters at Skyhold, and Solas had undoubtedly done the same. Moreover, Solas had always claimed that the Veil around Skyhold was unusually strong and resistant to unwanted incursions from the Fade, and I had never seen any evidence to contradict that assertion. Between that and the protective wards that the Inquisition's mage allies constantly maintained, I found it difficult to believe that such a powerful entity could have reached us to trap us here in the first place.

My aimless wanderings were getting me nowhere. I stopped at the bottom of a dead-end staircase, closed my eyes, and thought back to how I had sensed Solas in the Fade at the Winter Palace and flown to him instinctually. I cleared my mind as best I could and reached out for him with the limited awareness that I could muster. It was easy for me to find him this time, not because I had improved my ability to navigate through the Fade but because he was the only other dreamer I could sense in my vicinity. I tried to fly as I had done before, but the demon's realm enforced its own gravity upon me as insistently as the waking world did. So I started walking again, ignoring the fact that the path that led to Solas defied every sort of logic, bending back on itself until it seemed to go in circles. I knew that I would reach him eventually.

I wasn't sure how much time had passed when I finally reached an obstacle that would not yield to me when I tried to push it aside. That was a promising sign. I looked closer at what was in front of me, and my stomach knotted up. I had seen these heavy double doors with their black tiled mosaic before, at the borders of Solas's dream in Halamshiral. I remembered how he had opened them to me when I asked, and the things we had done to each other in the space beyond them. I swallowed hard and tried to clear the memories away. Those days were lost to us now.

I raised my fist to knock on the door, but hesitated. The last time we had encountered each other in the Fade, Solas had barred me from entering his dreams again. He had shown no signs since then of going back on his refusal. But surely a demon's private realm had to be different enough from his own dreams that it wouldn't count? The alternative, of being unable to aid him and watching as the unintended consequences of his well-meaning prohibition led to his death at the demon's hands, frightened me so much that I refused to accept it. I reined in my doubts and knocked. Nothing happened. But then I heard voices, and realized that I was close enough to him now to make out bits and pieces of a muffled conversation occurring in the room beyond. I put my ear to the narrow gap between the doors and listened.

Immediately, I could tell that I had missed out on a lot of context for whatever had already occurred. "No, _ma vhenan_ ," Solas was saying, "it is simply that...You cannot know how many times I have imagined telling you all of this. Since the first time we kissed I have longed to confess everything. I held back because I couldn't know whether you would reject everything out of hand. Never once did I imagine you would react to it this way."

"Is that a bad thing?" A woman's voice, low and teasing, the words overlaid with a subtly seductive veneer. _My_ voice - or the demon's imitation of it.

"Of course not! It is more than I dared to hope for." He paused, and when he spoke again he sounded even more uncertain. "You aren't angry with me for keeping these secrets for so long?"

"How could I be?" A faint rustle, as if the demon had moved closer to him, and a sharp intake of breath from one of them. "What you've told me - it's bigger than anything I could have dreamed of. It changes everything. And all the same, it changes nothing." A wet sound of lips pressing against lips. " _Ar lath ma, vhenan. Ar jusul'anan na._ "

I'd heard enough. I tried unsuccessfully to push the doors open, then kicked at them to no avail. No sound emerged from the other side, and that worried me more than anything. So I brought my left hand up and pressed it against the cool surface. Green light leaked from between my fingers and reflected in the dark mosaic tile. I wondered briefly whether I was overreacting, then decided it was better to do that than to leave Solas in a demon's clutches, and let the Anchor burst free from the slight control I still barely maintained over it. Brilliant energy exploded out of my hand, arcing out in front of me and filling my ears with a deafening roar.

The doors flew apart immediately as the mark's wild magic lanced between them and opened a small rift in the center of the space beyond them. I took in the scene in an instant. Here, the Fade had been shaped into a convincing imitation of Solas's rotunda in Skyhold, as shadowy and intimate as the facsimile of my bedroom had been. The desire demon now wore my face and body and perched on the edge of Solas's desk. In its arms I saw Solas himself, leaning into the demon's embrace and kissing it as if nothing on either side of the Veil mattered to him more. Its legs were around his waist, their hips slotting together and taking up an all-too-familiar rhythm. A heartbeat later, the rift's magic shoved itself between them. It knocked Solas to the floor and tossed the demon up into the air to writhe and arch its back in anguish amidst the interwoven tendrils of green energy.

I pointed my sword at the demon. "I told you I would fucking kill you," I shouted over the noise of the rift. Its only response was a high-pitched, keening shriek. Its disguise had abruptly evaporated and no vestige of me remained on its lavender skin. Solas was picking himself up from the ground with magic gathering around his fists and a thoroughly appalled expression on his face. My earlier unmasking of the demon within my own private fantasy had annoyed it at best, but the mark was genuinely hurting it, tearing away pieces of its essence that dissipated into wispy puffs of smoke. The demon hissed once more at me, then vanished. Moments later, the rift snapped closed with a bone-rattling jolt that made me wince. The room was suddenly, dreadfully silent.

"It isn't dead," said Solas, walking toward me as he dismissed his half-formed spells.

"I know," I said.

He looked at me as if he were trying and failing to will himself to believe that I hadn't seen or heard anything. A faint blush had risen to his cheeks. "This is humiliating."

"Most people would say _ma serannas._ "

Solas made a noise of irritation that he might have borrowed from Cassandra. He cast around the room, using his magic to take the measure of this place in which we were both confined. "So we are both trapped in this realm. The demon must not have understood the Anchor's power. Nor must it have known that you retained your lucidity within the Fade. It is fortuitous that it did not recognize what it might gain by tempting you."

"What? That's not what happened at all. Is it that hard for you to believe that it might have gone after me, too? Or that I resisted it? Because I did."

It took him a moment to realize that I was telling the truth. "Forgive me," he said, dropping his gaze to the floor. "I should know better than to diminish your abilities. I made a hasty assumption out of shock. It is humbling and troubling to realize I have become so complacent as to allow myself to be tricked like this."

"Don't be too impressed. I only caught on because the demon fucked up. And I didn't come here to rub your face in it. I need your help, Solas. I don't think I can get out of here without you." I wasn't trying to flatter him. I had sought him out not only to make sure that he was safe, but because I knew I didn't have the faintest idea of how to escape from this place on my own, no matter how much my own pride might try to convince me otherwise. 

"No, I don't think you can." His tone was thoughtful now, devoid of malice or callousness. He shared a simple fact, stated plainly, so that we could both accept it as a given and build our plans upon it from there. That quiet certainty and confidence told me beyond a shadow of a doubt that this time, I had found the real Solas and not the demon's caricature of what it believed him to be.

"Then can we help each other?"

"You are the Inquisitor. Your survival is essential if we are to use the Anchor to defeat Corypheus. Where you will go, I will go." His eyes met mine. In them I could almost see the afterimage of his long-ago return to Skyhold after the death of Wisdom. The words he had said still echoed: _I could hardly abandon you now._ My heart seized in the grip of an emotion I couldn't identify as I realized that even after everything that had happened between us, there was still no one else in Thedas that I trusted more to watch my back or to fight at my side.

"Great," I said, and forced myself to smile. "Where do we start?"

"We need to learn more about the nature of this realm - to explore it, and to determine its full size and shape. I can speculate about it based upon general principles, of course, but my understanding is still vague at best. Regrettably, I have no prior first-hand experience with being confined by a desire demon." His sudden smile was wry and rueful. "Once I have gathered more information, I will be better prepared to suggest a course of action."

"Then lead the way," I said. He nodded and walked past me toward the door, not looking away from me until the last possible moment. The knot in my belly tightened again as I followed in his wake. Before, I had wondered what may have drawn the desire demon to us - but we had only needed to exchange a few words before I understood how foolish it would have been for it to seek unfulfilled desire in any other place than between Solas and me. We weren't finished with each other yet. I wondered now if we would ever be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations of Elvhen phrases outside the usual ones, inspired by the conlang work of [FenxShiral](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/fenxshiral):
> 
> Ar jusul'anan na. = I will serve you.


	3. Rage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, fair warning that if you don't want to see Lavellan and Solas being kind of mean to each other, you may want to skip this chapter. /o\ They will get nicer, I promise. (Demons wreck everything.)

"This should not have been able to happen," Solas said as we walked together through the empty, twisting halls of the Fade.

"I know," I said. I wasn't sure how long we had been wandering through the desire demon's realm in an attempt to give Solas a clearer idea of its layout. The farther we went, the harder it became for me to believe that I had ever mistaken this place for Skyhold. Many of the walls and floors were made of the same rough stone as the keep, but they twisted and bent with a senseless dream-logic that was all their own. Chambers and courtyards and staircases appeared without warning, their dimensions ludicrous, their architecture impossible. Some of the locations came from nowhere near Skyhold: salons from Val Royeaux, ruined temples from the Emerald Graves, strange palaces where I had never walked and which I could not identify. I wondered how many of the unfamiliar places I saw were pure fiction, and how many of them had been drawn from Solas's memories.

"The demon could not have entered Skyhold by breaching the Veil," he said as we picked our way through a corridor clogged with fallen rubble. "The wards I set utterly forbid it. It could only have come here in a dormant state, possessing an object or an animal."

"Or a person," I said, as if giving voice to that terrible thought would be enough to rob it of its potency. Had someone I trusted been under a desire demon's influence all along, watching helplessly from behind their own eyes as the spirit grew in power and bided its time? Could I really have been ignorant enough that I hadn't noticed someone in my inner circle working against me from the beginning?

"It's possible." He saw the creases of worry on my brow, and his expression softened. "But if it were, I do not believe it could have possessed any of your advisors or your close companions. I look upon them frequently with my magic, and I am certain I would have noticed if any of them had picked up an unwelcome passenger. It is far more likely that the possessed person would be someone who had very recently arrived at Skyhold. They would necessarily have had little opportunity to influence the Inquisition yet."

"That's a small mercy."

"Indeed. Nevertheless, this entire situation troubles me. I will have to delve deeply into its causes so I can prevent it from happening again."

"Don't you think you're getting ahead of yourself? We have to figure out how we're getting out of here before you can indulge your fantasies about all the research you're going to do."

"I am considering that matter as well." Now it was Solas's turn to frown. "And I will admit that I am also asking myself what good you are in this particular scenario."

"Excuse me?"

"I beg your pardon. That was poorly phrased. I meant that although the desire demon controls the form and content of this realm, I am still in my element here. I retain my full complement of spells, and the Fade's closer connection to magic makes up for my lack of a staff to focus energy. You are not so fortunate. The demon's will surpasses your own when it comes to asserting what is permitted here, which is why you have remained unarmored." I had, in fact, remained dressed in the same simple tunic and breeches that I usually wore around Skyhold.

"Then why do I have my sword?" I raised the weapon that I held in my right hand and slashed the air with it a few times, grateful for the sharp whistle of the gleaming, keen blade.

"If I remember correctly, you do not typically allow others to handle it or care for it, yes? As far as the Fade is concerned, it has become an extension of your body. The demon could no more separate you from it than it could deny you your arms or legs."

"And to think Cassandra said there was no reason not to let Harritt sharpen it for me."

"You can gloat to her about it after we've escaped."

"Fair enough." I lowered my sword, annoyed by the fact that the Fade hadn't seen fit to provide me with a belt or a scabbard to carry it in. "Even without a shield or armor, I can still fight. I've got my templar abilities. And the mark, of course."

"Such powers are limited in scope, at best. You have entered this realm at a substantial disadvantage. With no one else here to aid us, I will need to devote a considerable portion of my attention to protecting you while you attack in the only manner you can. This will limit my tactics significantly. I would be much less constrained if you were not trapped here with me, and if I were not responsible for your well-being and that of the Anchor. I suppose there is no other choice than to work within the options I have been given."

"You forgot really quickly that you'd probably be balls deep in a desire demon right now if I hadn't shown up to rescue you," I said, and regretted it immediately.

A muscle along his jawline twitched. "I am simply providing you with a frank and realistic assessment of our capabilities so that we can formulate our plan accordingly. Would you prefer that I flattered you and pretended you had become an elvhen archmage as you slept?"

"No. I'm saying you don't have to be rude about it. And stop talking about 'our plan' when you haven't even told me what you think it is."

"I am still determining that. For now, I see no other option than to continue to investigate this realm until an opportunity for escape presents itself."

"Really? My plan would go more like this: We find the desire demon and stab it until it dies. No more demon, no more Fade realm to be trapped in. Right?"

"Yes. But I am not convinced this is a battle we can win alone."

"What other choice do we have? I hurt it already with the mark. We've faced worse things."

"But when we did, you were at your full strength. Here, you are unarmored, unprepared. I have little skill with healing magic. And I am certain that the demon began to mend its own wounds as soon as it departed from me."

"All the more reason to strike before it has time to recover, then."

Solas shook his head. "We will only get one chance to defeat it. We must choose our moment perfectly. I will not put you in harm's way until I am certain of our success."

We had made it past the piles of rubble and reached a garden half-destroyed by fire. Toppled statues of the gods lay in pieces around us. "That's a lovely thought, but it's impossible," I said. "We're both in danger every minute that we spend here. The demon is in control of this place, not us. The sooner we can get free of it, the safer we both are."

"And yet it will be all for nothing if you are killed in the process. This is not an ordinary dream, Inquisitor. If you die here, it really is the end."

"I already know that. And if you worry so much about protecting me that you forget about everything else, then we'll both die." I stopped in front of an ancient monument to some deity or another, now too shattered to identify, and turned to him with anger growing in my belly. "It's the same thing you always do, really. Keep me in the dark and tell me it's for my own good. That's what you always meant by caring about me. Controlling me."

"That is a lie and you know it. When have I ever prevented you from doing as you pleased? Did I stop you from recruiting the mages? Or banishing the Grey Wardens, or leaving Hawke behind to face the Nightmare?"

"No, but you agreed with all of those decisions. As soon as I drank from the Well, you couldn't get rid of me fast enough."

"That is also false. Inquisitor, for all of your oft-stated desire to put the past behind us, I find that you are the one who most frequently brings it up."

"What, you think I want you back? Don't flatter yourself. I just want to get us both out of this place without repeating the same mistakes we always make. After that, I'm going to be too busy stopping Corypheus to worry about you. Help me now or get out of my way, but otherwise, you can choke on Fen'Harel's cock for all I care."

Solas stared at me with his mouth gaping slightly open, uncertain for once of how to respond. Then he doubled over and burst out into peals of uncontrollable laughter. It was so contrary to any reaction that I could have expected from him that it only served to infuriate me even more. I tried several times to speak again - not that I knew what I might say if I succeeded - only to be cut off each time by his overwhelming mirth. "Such language," he gasped out.

And then, as suddenly as he had begun laughing, he stopped. He straightened up and dropped into a defensive stance, magic flaring at his fingertips as his eyes fixed on a spot just over my shoulder. "Behind you," he said, his words clipped and urgent. I turned around and saw a single rage demon, gliding out of an alcove and sliding across the floor on a slow, meandering, but inevitable path toward Solas and me.

I raised my sword and approached the demon with a degree of caution that would have been laughable in any other circumstances. On the other side of the Veil, rage demons rarely posed a threat anymore; I had come to see them as little more than an annoying obstacle that slowed my progress toward my real enemies. Here, without my shield and armor and all of the other enchanted trinkets that normally aided me in battle, I didn't know what to expect. I heard a low hum and felt my ears pop as a translucent blue barrier sprung up around me, as tightly fitted as a second skin. There was no time to thank Solas before the demon was upon me.

The demon landed the first blow, raking its fiery claws along the barrier. Sparks flew in front of my vision. I lashed out with my sword, slicing deeply into the lava-like substance that made up the demon's formless, molten body. Bolts of blue energy like icicles flew past me and homed in on the demon's head, burying themselves to the hilt when they landed - Solas's attacks, a bit weaker without a staff to guide them just as he had warned, but finding their target all the same.

I couldn't be sure which of us had hurt the demon more, but since I was still within its reach I clearly presented the more tempting target. It clawed at me again, and this time the barrier wavered and fizzled out. I chopped at the demon's extended limb and danced out of the way of its retaliatory strike. The demon's attacks were slower now, and droplets of lava were evaporating off of it and dissipating back into the Fade. We were winning. All we had to do was hold out for a little longer and land a few more solid blows.

But my instincts betrayed me before Solas could erect another barrier to protect me. The demon lunged at me with both of its hands outstretched, and I raised my left arm - the arm that usually would have had a shield strapped to it to turn the blow. The demon's burning talons sank into my forearm. I screamed and pulled away, staggering backwards so quickly that I almost fell over. The demon slid toward me again, pressing its advantage, and I narrowly ducked under a second swipe that might have taken my head off. I tried to ignore the searing pain in my arm and focus long enough to summon the mark, a templar's gift, anything that could save my own life.

But before I could settle on a strategy, a high-pitched shriek like a greatly amplified version of the winter winds that so often whistled around Skyhold's towers split the air. A dark cloud descended over the demon. Thick, impossible frost froze solidly around it, even as the core of its flaming body continued to glow bright and dangerous beneath the ice. "Now!" shouted Solas, and I knew exactly what he meant. I bellowed and raised my sword and charged at the frozen demon, putting all of my momentum behind my blade as I brought it down in the center of the creature's head. With a sharp, deafening crack, its body splintered into a thousand pieces that melted back into the Fade, as if the being they had once belonged to had never even existed.

I turned back toward Solas and staggered as the raw agony of my burned arm came rushing back to me. His steady hands took hold of me gently. "Are you hurt?" he said.

"Of course I'm hurt. But _ma serannas_. You saved me."

His only reply was a curt nod. I looked into his eyes, saw the concern written there, and realized that I no longer knew what I had been so angry about in the minutes that led up to the fight. Had it all been the influence of the rage demon lying in wait for us, or had I really thought and felt those things about him and the demon had only made it easier to express what was already there? I wasn't sure which possibility bothered me more. The only thing I knew for certain was that letting my emotions control me again could spell danger or doom for us both. I would need to be more cautious as long as we were trapped here. The problem was that I wasn't sure whether I could.


	4. Terror

A small fountain stood on the other side of the courtyard. Water trickled slowly out of vases held by decapitated statues that balanced on a pedestal in its center. That slight flow had been enough to keep the whole thing from going stagnant. It would have to do. I plunged my burned arm in up to my elbow and sighed shakily in relief as the pain temporarily receded. "Got anything we can use for a bandage?" I asked Solas.

"Only the clothes on our backs," he said. I felt his magic reaching out for me again. This time, its whisper-light touch deftly ripped out the seams of the partially-charred left sleeve of my tunic and sent the fabric softly tumbling into his hands.

"Sure, use mine first." I wanted it to sound like friendly teasing, but the words came out more sarcastic than I had intended.

Solas arched an eyebrow and began to reshape the sleeve into long strips of cloth. "Everything here belongs to the Fade in the end."

"How convenient." Experimentally, I pulled my arm out of the fountain. The chill of the water receded, and I winced as stinging, scorching pain flooded back into my senses. That was a good sign - if it hadn't hurt, I would know the injury was much too serious for us to manage with our limited resources. My skin was bright red and inflamed where the demon had struck me, and blisters were forming in the center of the burn. Without being asked, Solas wrapped the makeshift bandage loosely around my forearm. " _Ma serannas_ ," I mumbled, feeling a fresh rush of shame as I remembered the cruel things I had said to him just minutes before. _Not that he was exactly kind to me, either._

He seemed to understand what was troubling me, because he somewhat awkwardly patted my shoulder and said, "Desire demons are creatures of strong emotion. The one that rules over this realm is powerful, and we cannot help being influenced by it as long as we remain on this side of the Veil with it. It and its allies will try to prey upon our deepest fears and our hidden insecurities, to exaggerate our feelings until they get the better of us. We must remain calm to avoid attracting their attention."

"Wait, the desire demon has allies? Are there more rage demons in here with us?"

"Almost certainly. Lesser spirits often flock to realms such as this one. They exist in a sort of symbiosis with the ruling entity. Here, they would likely draw sustenance from the desire demon in exchange for doing its bidding. As I said, we must be cautious."

"All the more reason to find the desire demon and kill it quickly, then. The more time we spend wandering around, the more likely we are to run into its minions."

"Perhaps." Solas still sounded unconvinced. "I believe I have a better plan."

"Let's hear it, then."

Solas stared down into his own palm, concentrating fiercely, until a ball of green flame kindled there and floated up to bob in the air at the level of his eyes. I remembered following a similar orb deep into an abandoned wing of Skyhold, and from there to the Fade, and from there into his arms, and clenched my burned fist until the pain pulled me away from memories I couldn't afford to dwell on. "This realm is quite large," he said, staring into the light. "No spirit, no matter how powerful, could maintain a completely consistent barrier around a space of this size. The Veil will be stronger in some places than others. The spell I have just cast will seek out a weak spot. Once I have found a suitable location, you can use the mark to create a rift there and free us."

"What about the demon? We can't just let it go."

"No, we cannot. But we will be much better equipped to find its anchor on the other side of the Veil. If we can destroy the object to which it has attached itself - or exorcise it, if it has possessed a living being - we will not need to defeat the demon here in the Fade."

It wasn't a bad plan, as much as I hated to admit that my instinctive desire to charge after our enemy might not be the best or only solution. The pain in my burned arm crested again, and I tried to put it out of my mind. "You're right," I said. "I'm not at my best right now. Even if I were, this would be a difficult fight for the two of us alone. Let's get out of here and get help from the others in Skyhold."

"I'm glad you agree." Solas twisted his wrist and sent the orb spinning off ahead of us. It wove its way between toppled pillars and drifted through an archway that led away from the garden. I picked up my sword, and we both followed the light.

We walked together through the twisting halls of the Fade, keeping our eyes on the faint glow that preceded us, not speaking. At one point, the orb drifted through a narrow cleft in a rocky wall. As we squeezed through the gap, I couldn't avoid scraping my burned arm against the rough stone, and I inhaled sharply against the spike of pain that resulted. Solas looked back at me with genuine concern on his face. "Will you be all right?" he asked.

"I've been better," I replied.

"Is there any way that I can help you?"

I fell into step alongside him, holding my injured arm between his body and mine to give it some small amount of protection from the environment. "Talk to me, Solas. Right now, I've got nothing to do but think about what hurts and how much. So distract me."

"There is little else about my journeys in the Fade left to tell you." I could hear him smiling.

"I strongly doubt that."

"True. Let me amend that. There is little else that would be of interest to you."

"You're probably not wrong. This may come as a surprise to you, but interesting things _do_ happen outside of the Fade, you know."

"Undoubtedly. But for the past year, you have been present during the vast majority of my notable experiences in the waking world. It's hardly an effective distraction to repeat stories that you already know."

"You had a life before you met me. Tell me about that. Tell me about somewhere you used to live. Tell me about something stupid you did when you were a child. You don't have to reveal all the secrets of the universe."

Tension crept into his voice. "That would be even less interesting than a lecture about the inner workings of the Fade, _lethallan_."

I sighed. This conversation was certainly distracting me from my injury, but not in the way I had wanted. "It doesn't matter what you say, Solas. It matters that you say it." The orb had led us into a gloomy, circular atrium with elaborate but damaged murals covering its walls, depicting some long-forgotten battle in a hundred shades of faded and flaking paint. Water dripped steadily through a hole in the ceiling that revealed only a flat black night sky beyond it. "I'm trying to keep my mind off more than just a burned arm, you know. I'm out of my depth here. It's not the first time, and it won't be the last, and I know I can't let it get the better of me. But that doesn't change the fact that I still don't really know what I'm doing."

"I'm not so sure about that. We walked bodily in the Raw Fade, and defeated the Nightmare."

"Hawke saved us that time, not me. And we were both at full strength, and had Blackwall and Varric with us besides. That's the sort of thing I know I can't afford to dwell on. If you don't want to talk about yourself, that's fine. Make something up. I just need something to think about that didn't come from inside my own head. You said I had to keep my emotions from controlling me. Help me to do that. Please."

I would never know whether Solas's next words would have begun what I had requested, or just presented another familiar excuse. Before he could open his mouth to speak, a deafening shriek split the silence wide open. I screamed too, clumsily lifting my sword and waving it around at random as adrenaline flooded my body. A trio of terror demons had materialized on our left flank, and I barely sidestepped their claws and tails as they turned their attention toward us. I knew perfectly well that terror demons often hunted by trying to panic their enemies and provoke them into a fatal error, and that the fear I now felt was partially enhanced by their magic. It still took every scrap of my templar training to resist the compulsion to drop my weapon and flee.

I did not look back to see what Solas was doing. As soon as I felt him put a new barrier up around me, I lunged at the nearest demon with my blade. I still favored my burned left arm, so I knew that I wouldn't make the same mistake again in this fight, but that was far from my only problem. Outside of the Fade, I could rely on my shield and my heavy armor to turn aside even the most powerful attacks - but here, without my gear, any lucky hit from a demon might lead to my doom. I wasn't accustomed to needing to be so cautious, and it showed in my fumbling efforts at dodging and in each tentative swing of my sword.

Solas cast near-constant spells from somewhere behind me. The energy of his blasts whizzed past me to batter each terror demon in turn. One of them froze the creature in the lead, and I shattered it with a two-handed strike just as I had done to the rage demon earlier. My attack had brought me within the reach of the remaining two terror demons. They both lashed out at me with clawed limbs. I ducked under the first swipe, but the second demon kicked low and hit me square in the chest. I fell backwards and felt my barrier crackle and vanish.

I stabilized myself in a low crouch and thrust upwards with all my strength at the demon that had just kicked me. My sword sank deep into its lower torso, but by sheer bad luck, it wasn't a killing blow. The creature hissed in pain and jerked away, throwing me off-balance again as it dislodged the tip of my sword from beneath its ribs. It swung its arm at me in a vicious arc. I ducked, but could not avoid the second counterattack from its wildly thrashing tail. Solas hadn't managed to get a fresh barrier up around me in time, and I cried out in pain again as wicked barbs scored a deep line across my belly. I fell to my knees, struggling to lift my sword. The demons sensed my weakness, and loomed over me with avid, sadistic glee glittering in their multitude of eyes -

\- until a wall of ice sprung up from the ground between me and them.

"Get back, Inquisitor!" Solas shouted over the demons' screams, and I obeyed. He was too busy casting other spells to renew my barrier now. I scuttled backwards, moving carefully to keep from further aggravating the slash across my stomach that was slowly leaking hot blood across the front of my tunic. Solas raised his hands and let out a wordless cry as a boulder, formed from the essence of the Fade itself, coalesced between his outstretched palms and launched itself over the wall to strike the demon that had just attacked me square in the chest. The creature fell, crushed beneath the weight of the stone, and did not get up.

The last remaining demon skittered around the edge of the ice wall and leapt at Solas with its fangs bared. Whatever spell he was preparing fizzled out as the creature knocked him to the ground and held him there. Its gnashing jaws struck blue sparks from the fading barrier that surrounded him. I saw him struggling to stand and knew he couldn't hold out alone for much longer. So I pushed aside my pain and fear and thought, _Only you can save him now. If you believe in nothing else, believe that much!_ I reached inside myself again and _pulled_ until I found the same blazing white light that had stunned the desire demon earlier. I closed my eyes, pointed, and made myself a conduit for that power, knowing I had done all I could do.

When I opened my eyes a moment later, the last terror demon had toppled over onto its side, rendered temporarily helpless by whatever I had called down. I pulled myself slowly to my feet and, with shaking hands, brought my sword down on the demon's neck. As its remains melted into the floor, I wobbled and fell backwards. Solas was there to catch me.

"Hold still," he said, and again it was not difficult to comply. I winced as his fingers moved across my torso, pulling at my shredded tunic, trying to determine the extent of my injuries.

"Where did they all come from?" I said, unsure if I was talking to Solas or to myself. "I wasn't even afraid before they showed up. If that's all it takes to attract them, we might have a problem."

"It wasn't because of you."

Maybe the loss of blood had left me light-headed, because it took me a moment to understand. "Are you saying-"

Solas met my gaze with his hands still pressed firmly against my belly. "As you mentioned, you are out of your depth here. I began to think too much about that, and-" Something like shame crept across his features, and he lowered his voice. "I feared for your life. I still do." I heard the meaning he hid behind those words, the unspoken _ma vhenan_ that we both wanted him so badly to say. We were in a lot of trouble. We had been in trouble all along.


	5. Sloth

Solas looked into my eyes for so long without speaking that I knew I had to be the one to break the spell. I took him by the wrists and gently moved his hands away from my body. "Let me have a look at that," I said, and lifted up my own tunic to expose the bloody slash across my belly, craning my neck to see it more clearly. It was pretty bad. The terror demon's claws had opened a long, jagged gash in my stomach that stretched nearly from one hip to the other. Blood still oozed slowly from the edges of the wound. It was more difficult and painful than it should have been to hold my head up, so I knew that the cut went at least as deep as the top layers of muscle. "Could have been worse," I muttered weakly, trying not to imagine the narrowly averted reality in which I might have moved a second slower and ended up with my guts spilling across the floor.

"Lie down," Solas said, and I did, although I was now unavoidably aware that my head was resting in his lap. He returned one of his hands to my torso and placed the other on my burned left arm. "I believe that I can stabilize you, and perhaps accelerate your healing."

"I thought you just said you didn't know how."

"I said that I knew little of healing magic, not that I knew nothing of it. Now hold still."

Warmth flowed from his fingertips and into my body, bathing my injuries in golden light. The pain slowly receded and was replaced by a faint tingling sensation. "It doesn't hurt anymore," I said.

"Good. The spell is working." We both fell silent. I stared up into the vaulted ceiling of the room, listening to the slow drip of water from somewhere high above and the echo of my own harsh breathing. The tracking orb from Solas's earlier spell still hung in the air nearby, rotating slowly and casting down its flickering green glow. For long moments, nothing on either side of the Veil mattered more than the firm pressure of his hands on me and the slow healing running through my veins. " _Ma serannas sal_ ," I finally said. "For saving me."

"You did the same for me."

"I suppose so." I hadn't thought of it that way in the chaos of the fight, but Solas evidently had. He was not the sort of person who typically said things he didn't mean.

"When you have recovered, it would be prudent for us to continue to work together in this way," said Solas. "The desire demon wants us to turn against each other. Two people with a single, unified purpose are harder to tempt than one. We must not forget that it will lie to us, and that getting free from this place is our primary goal. If we can remain calm and not play into the demon's hands, it will likely lose interest in us. That will make it easier for us to escape."

"At least this happened after we decided we could stop avoiding each other."

"I am grateful for that, too. We fight well together."

"That could be interpreted in several different ways," I said dryly, and he laughed. "But I agree. Things have always gone best when we're on the same side." I smiled as I thought back on all of the strange and unforgettable adventures we'd had together in the space of the past year, even as an unexpected tinge of melancholy colored my memories. "I'm going to miss all of this when it's over, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"Once we beat Corypheus - assuming we survive - that's it for you, isn't it? You only joined the Inquisition in the first place because you thought we had the best chance of beating him. You're not a true believer like Cassandra or Cullen."

"Nor are you. At least not in the manner that the human Chantry promotes."

"No, I'm not, but where else am I going to go at this point? The Inquisition is my home now." I had never actually verbalized that idea before, but as soon as I spoke the words, I knew that I believed them. Even if I would always regard Andraste and the Maker and the organization that worshiped them with skepticism and doubt at best, nothing really remained to me now outside the motley band of friends and allies I had assembled. I didn't want to contemplate the alternatives to staying with them right now. "There will always be new threats to face, or repercussions from the fight with Corypheus that we didn't anticipate. Someone will need to fix those problems, and I trust my people with that duty much more than I would trust anyone else."

"Even though Mythal could take control of your actions at any time? Are you sure that's wise?"

I sighed. I hadn't wanted to tell Solas that drinking from the Well of Sorrows had bound me to the will of Mythal herself and not just to the temple's long-dead servants. After the way he had reacted to my decision, I had dreaded the thought that he might gloat over having been right all along. But I had also wanted him at my side to confront the Guardian of Mythal, and it would have seemed wrong not to let him or my other companions know exactly what they were facing. So the war council knew the truth about the debt I owed to Mythal, as did Morrigan and the three people who had accompanied me to face the dragon: Cassandra, Cole, and Solas. As much as I hated keeping secrets from the rest of my friends, I agreed with Leliana that this particular bit of information had to be shared only on a need-to-know basis - and for the moment the others didn't need to know it, strictly speaking. When Solas had heard the news, his only reaction had been to regard me with profound sadness and then to walk away. In a way, that had been worse than anything I could have imagined.

"Of course I've thought of that," I said. "But I'm not sure it changes anything. Should I spend the rest of my life doing nothing at all, just in case Mythal chooses to interrupt it?"

"Some people might say so, yes. Or at least they would say that you should exercise great caution in the choices you make and the power you pursue, since you will also put that power in her hands."

"And by 'some people' you mean you, right?" His lack of response told me everything I needed to know. "Solas, you might not have a problem with retreating from society to live as a hermit just to prevent yourself from making any mistakes, but I do. That's not who I am. I need to do _something_ with what I've been given, to do the best I can to change things for the better. If Mythal or anyone else gets in my way, I'll handle it when it happens. Worrying about uncertain possibilities does nobody any good. We've had this conversation before. We should both know by now that we're not going to change the other's mind."

"We have," said Solas, "and I do." He exhaled heavily, a short frustrated sound that I only ever heard him make when he was trying to decide whether to share what he was thinking, and how much of it, and how blunt to be about it. "You must also know that I would not tell you these things if I did not speak from experience. I have...too much familiarity, I think, with what it is to suffer the unforeseen consequences of my own actions. It has afforded me a degree of caution that you have never appeared to share."

Maybe the blood loss had affected me more than I thought, because I couldn't stop the first question that bubbled to the surface of my mind from slipping out from between my lips. "Was the _vir'abelasan_ one of those things you had 'too much familiarity' with?"

His face filled my field of vision as he leaned down to meet my eyes with a regretful, solemn gaze. "After a fashion."

"You might have told me that while it was happening, you know."

"Would it have changed your mind?"

He had me there. "Probably not," I admitted in a small voice.

"Then what should I have done? Should I have thrown myself in your path and cried out my objections until I managed to stop you?"

"You wouldn't have done that anyway, I don't think. You value freedom too highly. Even when that means the freedom to do the wrong thing."

Solas's answering nod was so slight that I barely noticed it. His form had become hazy around the edges, and I realized that I was crying. He let go of my arm, and I shivered involuntarily at the sudden loss of the healing spell's warm sensation. Then I felt the soft swipe of his callused thumb at the corner of each of my eyes, wiping away my tears. I was struck by the sudden urge to kiss him and suppressed it before it could take root. _Talk about giving the desire demon exactly what it wants._

" _Ir abelas_ ," I said again, shoving everything I still couldn't help feeling for Solas into a corner of my mind where I wouldn't have to think about it again for a while, then blinking to clear my vision. Avoiding the demons' attention wasn't the only reason that I needed to stay in control of my own emotions.

"Don't apologize." He returned his hand to my forearm, looked away from me, and cleared his throat. "You are right. I've been too reticent. I haven't told you everything that I should. I intend to change that. Soon."

"But not today."

"I haven't forgotten my promise to you, Inquisitor. I will explain myself to you, but after Corypheus is defeated. To speak of those matters here and now would only serve as a distraction, and give our current foe more arrows in its quiver to use against us." I could hear him reassembling his own inner walls as he spoke, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the just-vanished moment in which he had comforted me as though it were still the most natural thing in the world. It was probably for the best.

"That's fair," I said. "But could you answer me one thing?"

"That depends on what the question is, Inquisitor."

"When we started talking, I assumed you would be leaving the Inquisition when all of this was over. But is that really what you intend to do?"

"I don't know," said Solas, more uncertain now than I'd heard him sound in a long time. "I cannot deny that the Inquisition has been a force for good under your leadership. But staying here may not be the best way for me to do the things that I must still do." He leaned down to meet my eyes again. "When this is over, would you rather that I stayed or left?"

"I don't know, either. Some days I want you to stay forever. Other days I hope you'll get out of my sight and never come back. Your skills are tremendously useful to the Inquisition, it's true. But I don't know if that's enough to make up for...you know, everything else." I grinned at him joylessly. "A lot of it probably depends on what you tell me after Corypheus is dead."

"Yes, I suppose it does." Abruptly, he lifted his hands from my body. "I've done all that I can to heal you. I hope it will be enough."

Cautiously, I sat up and looked down at my torso again. The bleeding had stopped and the wound across my belly had closed up substantially, leaving behind an angry, thick red line with a scab already beginning to form on its surface. The muscles of my core still ached and the cut still stung, but it was nothing like the agony that had overtaken me earlier. I flexed my arm experimentally and felt no pain. When I pulled off the makeshift bandage, I saw only a flaking patch of shiny, pink new skin where the rage demon had struck me, no worse than an uncommonly nasty sunburn. "It's more than enough. I feel much better now. I'm ready to move on whenever you are."

"Good," said the desire demon from somewhere toward the center of the room. "I was starting to think the two of you would never stop talking."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations of Elvhen phrases outside the usual ones, inspired by the conlang work of [FenxShiral](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/fenxshiral):
> 
> Ma serannas sal. = Thanks again.  
> vir'abelasan = the Well of Sorrows


	6. Hunger

Solas and I both leapt to our feet, watching the desire demon with a mixture of wariness and alarm. It floated in the air just beyond our reach, smirking, its hands moving constantly in smooth and intricate patterns. Was it my imagination, or was its form a bit ragged around the edges, as if it hadn't yet fully recovered from its last encounter with the Anchor's power? "How nice," it said sarcastically. "You found each other at last."

"Fuck off and die," I said, as calmly as I could manage. Now more than ever before, I knew that I had to keep my emotions in check. The demon wanted me off-balance and vulnerable to manipulation. I refused to play into its schemes any more than I already had.

"You haven't even given me a chance to talk to you yet," it said with an exaggerated frown. "For all you know, I might be able to offer you something you want."

"At the price of my soul or my freedom? Unlikely."

"Oh, don't be so dramatic. Besides, how do you know you don't want it when I haven't even told you what it is?" The demon drifted closer to Solas now and looked down on him with a knowing tilt of its horned head before settling its gaze back on me. "Your wizard lover told me so many interesting things when I spoke to him alone. Things he hasn't told you about himself. Things I'm sure you'd like to know. Would you like me to share them with you? Between you and me, templar, I don't think he's going to keep his promise to explain it all to you later. I wouldn't, if I were him. Who can say what you might do to him if you knew the truth?"

 _"Fenedhis!"_ The demon and I turned in unison toward Solas, who until this moment had scarcely seemed to acknowledge the creature's presence. Now he stood in a fighting stance, scowling, gathering a mass of bright white magic between his cupped hands.

"What are you doing?" I shouted over the noise of the crackling energy, but he didn't respond. The light of the spell intensified until it reached a blinding peak. Solas threw his arms out wide to send it out in all directions. I lifted my arm to shield my eyes from the glare, half-blinded already by the blazing afterimage of the power he had unleashed. My skin crawled as the enchantment washed over me on its way to its intended target. The demon keened, but in frustration rather than pain, and when I opened my eyes it appeared entirely unhurt. What was Solas trying to do?

"Cute," said the demon through gritted teeth. "Now we're all trapped here. The joke's on you, though, wizard - this is _my_ home, and I know I can outlast you both. I gave you a choice. You were offered a way out, and you refused it. Bear that in mind for the future." It blinked out of sight as abruptly as it had appeared.

Solas dropped to his knees, breathing heavily. "I will," he said to the empty air.

I crouched next to him with a sensation of growing dread rising in my throat. "Tell me what just happened."

"I solidified the matrix of the Veil around the demon's realm. Our explorations were thorough enough to allow me to make an educated guess at the dimensions that the spell would need to cover." He pulled the spherical wisp of magic we'd been following down out of its orbit near the ceiling and crushed it into vapor in his fist. "My original plan of locating a weak spot along the perimeter will not work any longer. There are no more gaps in it for anyone to exploit. The demon is just as confined here now as we are."

"So basically we're worse off than we were before, then."

"That is open to interpretation. Before, the demon could have departed from its own realm at any time, if it didn't mind setting us free in the process. It cannot do so any longer. It will not be able to escape with what it knows."

I sat down heavily, unable or unwilling to comprehend what I was hearing. "What did you tell it?"

"Much more than I should have. Things that could be used against the Inquisition, or to harm many innocent people, were the demon to escape and share its knowledge with others. I will admit that I had not considered this possibility before it began to taunt you. When I realized what I had done, I saw no other choice but to ensure that it remained confined here until I can correct my error in judgment."

" _Vyn esaya gera assan i’mar’av’ingala._ What were you thinking, Solas? If it was that dangerous for anyone else to know all of these secrets you keep going on about, why would you tell them to anyone, even to me?"

"Because I always knew it wasn't you." He was still watching the floor instead of me. I could tell he wasn't finished, so I bit back a number of clarifying questions and additional insults and listened to him instead. "When you - when that version of you came to me, I knew that I had forbidden the real you from visiting my dreams. I also believed - erroneously, as it turns out - that no malicious spirits could invade my sleep within the walls of Skyhold. I assumed that I was speaking to a phantom. A figment of my own imagination. I believed I could say whatever I wanted to it without lasting consequences."

"Or _do_ whatever you wanted to it," I muttered.

His tone became clipped and curt. "It was a disrespectful moment of weakness that I should never have indulged. You were never meant to know of it. _Ir abelas._ Eternally."

I paused. Before his admission of guilt, I had been ready to excoriate him for his foolishness until I ran out of breath - but now that I really _did_ understand what he had been thinking, I could only summon empathy for him and something that oddly resembled pity. Perhaps this was a weakness of my own. I gave in to a sudden urge to touch him and rested my hand on his shoulder without really knowing why I did it. "I accept your apology," I said. "But if you had been there to see even half the things I've done to you in my dreams, you'd know I'd be the worst kind of hypocrite to demand one in the first place."

"It is a relief to hear that." Solas was able to meet my eyes now. "For what it's worth, Inquisitor, this demon doesn't know you nearly as well as it thinks it does. ' _Ar jusul'anan na?'_ In what reality would you ever say such a thing to me? In what reality would I ever want to hear it?"

"Since you know at least that much, I take back everything I just said about your intelligence." I gave him an experimental smile and was pleased when he returned it. But it faded from my lips in an instant as I remembered how much trouble we were still in. "I hope you have another plan, now that the original one won't work anymore."

"I do." Solas stood up slowly and I followed him, grimacing at the way the motion tugged at the barely-healed slash to my stomach. "But we will have to be cautious and choose the proper moment to execute it. We cannot afford any more mistakes."

"How much time do we really have, though? The demon said it could outlast us, and I don't find that hard to believe. I've never spent longer than one night in the Fade before. At some point, won't our bodies start needing things on the other side of the Veil?"

"Mine will not," he said matter-of-factly. "If I must, I can draw sustenance from the Fade itself. I am able to remain here more or less indefinitely. But you, on the other hand…" His brow furrowed. "I would not worry. You are the Inquisitor. Your absence will be quickly noted, and in the event that we are delayed in escaping, I am certain that your physical form will be located and cared for by the others at Skyhold."

"I suppose so. But what if we get separated somehow? Nobody else is going to be able to come in here after me." Dorian, Vivienne, and Skyhold's other mages knew next to nothing about spirits and the Fade compared to Solas. Even if one of them were able to figure out what had happened to me, I doubted that any of them had the necessary knowledge to breach the demon's realm. "If I lose you, do I just wander around until I starve to death?"

"I will not permit that to happen," he said with utter certainty. "Only one course of action remains to us now. We must find the demon here in its lair and kill it. Once we have defeated it, it will no longer be able to maintain the integrity of its realm, and you and I will be ejected from the Fade. Then we will be free to find the demon's anchor in or around Skyhold on the other side of the Veil and exorcise it for good."

"That should work. But I'm going to say this to you at least once: That is exactly what I said we should have done in the first place."

Solas opened his mouth to reply, but before he could get any words out, the room filled with the sound of chattering mandibles and chitinous legs skittering across stone. A multitude of giant spiders was emerging out of the shadows around us - fearlings, like the ones the Nightmare had sent against us in the Raw Fade. "Those are probably my fault," I mumbled as I picked up my sword again.

"I'm not so sure." Solas sounded unconcerned as he wove his barriers around us in preparation for yet another fight. "We have dealt the desire demon a serious blow. It's likely that it will continue send its minions against us whenever it can, no matter how calm we remain."

"Great. I'll take that as permission to be as scared and angry as I want to be."

He laughed, and with a wave of his hand sent a long blast of ice shooting through the nearest clump of fearlings, freezing some of them and sending others sprawling as their legs slipped on the thin sheet of ice that now covered the floor. I waded into the melee and started hacking at every spider I could reach. A fierce grin split my face as my sword cut through them and I watched their essence evaporating back into the Fade. This wasn't complicated. This was something I understood. In battle I was confident; in battle I didn't have to think about how much more confused I became about Solas the longer we remained in the desire demon's realm. But I knew that if I told myself that I'd be finished with him once we finally escaped, I was deluding myself as much as he had when he allowed himself to believe, for one stolen moment, that some innocent and guileless illusion from a dream could be the same as the real me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations of Elvhen phrases outside the usual ones, inspired by the conlang work of [FenxShiral](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/fenxshiral):
> 
> Vyn esaya gera assan i’mar’av’ingala. = You would try to catch an arrow with your teeth. (i.e., that was a really stupid thing to do)  
> Ar jusul'anan na. = I will serve you.


	7. Envy

The fight against the fearlings proceeded more smoothly than our confrontations with either the rage demon or the terror demons - partially because Solas and I had figured out how to support each other with the skills that we possessed, but also because our enemies were, quite frankly, not very smart. They did not appear to learn from their mistakes, or to have any strategy beyond spitting venom out in front of them and then rushing at us with their fangs bared. Their only real threat came from their inexhaustible numbers.

Soon we fell into a comfortable rhythm of attacks and counterattacks, evasions and defenses. Sometimes, Solas froze or slowed the fearlings by encasing them in sheets of ice, and I waded into the midst of the unmoving demons to dispatch them with my sword. Other times, I called upon the same power I had used to stun the desire demon earlier, and Solas finished our immobilized foes off with quick, almost casual blasts of magic from his hands. Our barriers deflected the few bites that the fearlings managed to land on either of us. "This is becoming tiresome," I muttered as I carved through spider abdomens and flailing limbs.

"Perhaps you need to develop a greater variety of fears, Inquisitor," said Solas in his incredibly serious tone of voice that, paradoxically, always let me know that he was joking. "Unless you are simply more frightened of spiders than you've ever let on?"

"I'm not exactly fond of them - aah!" I ducked under a flying gout of venom and came up to drive my sword through the head of the fearling that had shot it at me. "But I think it's easiest for the desire demon to represent fear this way." I had no idea how the Fade might go about depicting all of the other, more abstract things I feared, and I hoped I wouldn't have to find out. "In other words…" I jumped backwards to avoid another fearling as it tried to trample me, and affected a deliberately shoddy imitation of the way Solas sounded when he commented on the qualities of the Fade. "... _the Veil is lazy here_."

Solas erupted into laughter, but then abruptly silenced himself and said, "Careful." An immense wave of fearlings poured into the room and skittered inexorably toward us. It was the desire demon's last attempt to stop us with its current complement of minions, and the horde that it summoned nearly overwhelmed me. I swung my sword in a wide arc, striking some of the fearlings and causing others to shy away from me, but there were simply too many of them for me to drive them all back without the added defenses of a shield and armor.

One particularly large spider pounced on me at the exact moment that a previous attack had thrown me slightly off-balance. I tumbled to the floor, rolling with the momentum of the fall and struggling for the upper hand - but I failed to get a grip on the fearling and ended up with my shoulders pinned to the ground by two of its spindly, hairy legs. Sparks of blue magic flew as Solas's barrier deflected its gnashing mandibles away from my face and neck. I wasn't sure how much longer the spell would hold out, or whether he would be too distracted to renew it when the fearling broke through it. I couldn't afford another serious injury. I knew what I had to do.

I summoned all of my strength and yanked my left arm free from beneath the insistent pressure of the spider's leg. Then I pressed my hand against the warm, slightly sticky plates of its exoskeleton and let the energy of the mark loose again. The fearling did not even have time to scream before it abruptly shriveled in on itself under the unnatural green glow of the rift that I had opened in the center of the room. Clumsily, I stood up and retreated to the place where Solas was standing. We watched the Anchor take the remaining fearlings apart as he shot occasional, desultory icicles at any that showed signs of escaping from the rift's pull.

The last fearling disintegrated into a puff of green mist, and the rift slammed shut. Solas watched me as I cleaned the spider ichor from my sword as best as I could manage. "What does it feel like?" he asked.

It took me a moment to understand what he meant, and when I did, I couldn't help smiling. "You mean the Anchor?" He nodded. _Leave it to Solas to be curious about weird magic even while we're fighting for our lives._ "It's hard to describe. It's never seemed like something I control, like the templar stuff. I don't even really _do_ anything when I use it - I just let it happen. It's more like opening a gate and standing back while whatever's on the other side comes through."

"Does it hurt?"

"Sometimes. Not as much as it used to."

"I am happy to hear that." Solas extended his palm again and kindled a new orb of bright violet magic within it. "When you are ready, we should move on. This spell will guide us closer to the desire demon's lair."

"I'm ready." We trudged through the Fade after the floating wisp. It didn't take long for frustration to set in. I should have been pleased that we were following my plan, but now it felt just as futile as the search for a weak spot in the Veil had been. Only the color of the orb and its ultimate destination had changed, not the tedium of the journey or the nagging sense that all of this was taking more time than we could spare. And as long as our enemies remained hidden, there was nothing I could do except follow Solas and wait for my opportunity to fight them in the only way I knew how. I was as tired of the silence as I was of feeling helpless, so I said the first thing that came to mind. "This would all be so much easier if I were a mage."

"Do you mean right now, or in general?" asked Solas as we pursued the orb down a dark and seemingly endless spiral staircase.

"Both, I guess. There aren't many times when magic isn't useful. Especially when you consider how many weird things the Inquisition runs into. You get to play with the fundamental forces of the universe. I hit demons with a sword. You can understand why I might think I'm missing out on something."

"Magic itself is endlessly fascinating, yes. I should not like to contemplate my existence without it. But in the current climate of Thedas, I'm not convinced that being a mage is a state to aspire to. You would have faced confinement in a Circle, or a life of hardship and privation amongst whatever Dalish clan could take you in."

"Unless I had become an apostate, like you."

"A precarious way of being, and one that does not eliminate the prejudices of others. No, Inquisitor, being a mage has its own trials, and will as long as people continue to hate and fear magic and the Fade. As much as I have wished that I could show reality to you as I see it, under the current circumstances, there is a freedom in the lack of magic that can sometimes provide its own advantage. In a different world, however…"

"So you think the world would be better if everyone were a mage?"

"Thus it was in the time of Arlathan - after a fashion. In those days, my kind did not wield magic as if it were nothing more than a weapon or a tool. It was a more harmonious arrangement. The People lived as one with the Fade, without boundaries between spirits and the physical world."

"That was a long time ago, Solas. We can't go back to the way it was."

"No," he said distantly, not sounding entirely convinced.

"Too bad I'll never know what it was like. I would have liked to get the chance to shoot lightning at something, just once."

He chuckled. "How interesting that instead you chose to become the sort of person who prevents others from shooting lightning at all."

"Was that supposed to be a joke?"

Solas sped up his pace so that he was now walking a few steps in front of me. New tension had appeared in his shoulders. "Yes. Clearly, it was a poor one."

But I couldn't seem to let go of the thoughts that his words had summoned up, although I could tell that he dearly wanted me to. "Is there something you haven't told me? All this time, have you had a problem with me becoming a templar?"

"Why should it matter to you if I do? Barely an hour ago you said you no longer cared what I thought of your decisions - albeit in more colorful terms."

"The demon had a hand in making me believe that. Of course I respect your opinions, Solas. Do you think I'd talk to you this much if I didn't care what you had to say?"

He sighed. "Perhaps we are both more insecure about these matters than we care to admit. I know you haven't meant everything you have said in this realm. Nor have I, if I am being honest with myself. But I would also be lying if I claimed that your decision had never troubled me."

"I always knew that," I said softly. Solas had never told me outright that he disapproved of my decision to study with Ser. I also knew that it was not in his nature to interfere with a choice I made that affected only me, even if he disagreed with it. Yet I remembered certain comments he had made - meaningless in isolation, but together adding up to a greater pattern of discomfort - and times that he had shied away from me on the battlefield after I had purged an enemy's spell in a particularly flashy manner. And there had been another incident, early in my training, when I had kissed him and he'd murmured something about being able to taste the lyrium on my breath. Was that why he had left me? Because he couldn't bring himself to trust a templar? Something told me that the answer could not possibly be so straightforward as that.

We had reached the bottom of the spiral staircase. Now the orb led us through a dimly lit, slightly curving corridor made of white stone, broader and less cluttered than any of the other passageways we had encountered. Was it a coincidence, or were we getting closer to our goal? When Solas spoke again, it took me a moment to realize that he was delving deeper into the same conversation instead of simply letting the awkwardness melt away. "I simply do not understand why you would make such a choice."

"I had to pick something to focus on to get stronger, didn't I? There were only so many options presented to me. Being a reaver felt all wrong, and I'm definitely no one's champion. But to be better at closing rifts and fighting demons, to be able to resist them when they tried to manipulate me - that sounded worthwhile. And it's useful right now, isn't it?"

"I cannot fault your practicality, Inquisitor. But there is more to being a templar than prowess in battle, is there not? It requires faith. And unless I am unaware of some great change in your worldview, you are not an Andrastian and you do not adhere to the Chantry."

"I'm not, and I don't. But Ser told me that there are more ways to be a templar than what the Chantry does to their recruits. Like how Cullen found out it doesn't really take much lyrium to maintain the abilities once you learn them. I don't believe in Andraste or the Maker, it's true. But I do believe in something. Or at least I did when I started out. Who knows what makes the powers work now. I don't have that kind of faith anymore."

"You mean faith in the elven gods."

I nodded even though I knew he couldn't see me, and didn't bother trying to prevent bitterness from creeping into my tone. "Turns out that was misplaced, right? I'm not sure who or what my people's gods are anymore, but they certainly aren't what I grew up believing they were. That doesn't mean I knew enough to keep myself from getting bound to one of them, though. You were right all along - they were just a bunch of fallible arseholes. Hearing me say that must make you feel good."

He glanced over his shoulder at me, and I was surprised by the sadness in his face. "Your disillusionment brings me no pleasure. I told you this already when you drank from the Well."

"You're right, you did. I should probably try to believe you."

"I meant it then. I mean it now."

"I appreciate your sympathy. I wish it were enough to change things. If only this bond to Mythal went both ways." I stopped in my tracks, my mind gripped by an idea I hadn't considered before. "Unless it does."

Solas turned to face me, looking quizzical and uncertain. "Please explain."

"Think about it. Mythal can control me now, but she won't get any use out of me if I die in a desire demon's Fade realm before she can give me any commands. What if I asked for her help, or for help from the Well itself?"

"What makes you think that Mythal would be able to render assistance here?"

"She's the goddess of love, isn't she? Or at least that's what the Dalish say she is. You're the one who taught me that a demon is just a spirit whose purpose has been twisted. What's desire anyway if it isn't love bent out of shape? So shouldn't Mythal's power be the perfect thing to help us overcome a desire demon?"

Solas continued to stare at me, as astonished as he had ever been. "I cannot agree," he said at last, squaring his shoulders as if he knew that he was walking into another confrontation. "Asking Mythal or the servants of the Well will not produce the outcome that you wish for. And if you persist in seeking their aid, I will have to be the one to stand in your way."


	8. Despair

"What do you mean, you'll stand in my way?" I said. We had come to a halt inside a massive, circular room that acted as a sort of junction between the various parts of the realm. Dozens of identical doors branched off from it, bunched so closely together that only inches separated each shadowy archway from the next. I had already forgotten which one we had emerged from.

Solas's fists were clenched at his sides. "Earlier, you were displeased that I had not warned you about the possible consequences of your actions when I foresaw them. I am doing that now."

"What else could there possibly be to warn me about? It's not like I can get any more indentured to Mythal or the Well than I already am."

"Perhaps not. But you are fortunate that Mythal has paid you little mind thus far. She has largely allowed you to operate as you please. To draw a god's attention is a dangerous thing, Inquisitor. There are many ways in which Mythal could make your life very difficult if she so desired. I beg you not to give her the opportunity."

"You really think she'd do that? I met her, remember? Between that and my people's stories, I'd like to think I know at least a little bit about what she's like. Wrecking my life for fun doesn't seem like her style. She's interested in justice."

"Whatever that means to a goddess. She is renowned for her vengeance as well, and she does not suffer fools lightly. I would not try her patience with your concerns if I were you."

"How do you know all of this about her?" I asked. Solas averted his eyes and did not answer. Impotent, indignant rage began to bubble inside my chest. "You're hiding something from me again. What do you know that you aren't telling me?"

"Nothing that relates to our current predicament."

"Are you sure of that? Or are you just so accustomed to keeping secrets from me that you do it by reflex? Think before you answer, now."

Solas took a step closer to me with anger clouding his face. " _Fenedhis!_ This is impossible. _You_ are impossible. What is it that you want from me, Inquisitor?"

"The truth! Is that really so difficult?"

"And I have given it to you! You berate me for not warning you when you are about to blunder into danger, but now that I have told you of my concerns, you will dismiss them out of hand because the evidence was not thorough enough. Can't it be enough for me to tell you that something is dangerous without needing to enumerate all of the reasons why I believe it to be so? You will never rest until you have catalogued every moment of my life and all the evidence of my shortcomings, will you?"

I opened my mouth to respond with what probably would have been an outpouring of outrage all my own. But then I noticed the hurt and confusion in Solas's eyes - hurt that I had caused without meaning to do so - and I forced myself to stop and think. We had never fought like this outside the Fade, not even after I had drunk from the Well. Was this disagreement really that much more profound than any other, or was the demon influencing our emotions again? There was only one way to be sure.

Instead of answering Solas's question, I spread my arms out wide and said quickly, "In the event that this hurts, _ir abelas_ in advance." I clapped my hands together before I could second-guess myself, investing the motion with a desperate, mental plea: _Mythal, Maker, whoever, just let me see things as they really are!_

My palms met each other with a sound like a thunderclap. A strong wind rushed through the room and over Solas and me, and my skin prickled with power. Immediately our surroundings seemed calmer and more open, as if something menacing and oppressive had just been removed from the area, and peace and harmony had been permitted to reassert themselves. I remembered my anger and everything that both of us had said, but I couldn't recall what had provoked such a disproportionate response in me. Solas appeared equally perplexed. _So it wasn't just us after all._ "Spell purge," I said. "Works every time."

Solas looked shaken. "The demon's influence is growing. We're fortunate that you recognized it for what it was. Stay alert. It will certainly attempt such tactics again."

"I know," I said. I wondered if he was going to apologize for anything he'd said while under the demon's influence. Then again, I wasn't sure that I was ready to apologize to him yet, either. "Can we talk about this without shouting now? So you don't want me to ask Mythal for help. I get it. If you object so strongly, I'll try something else. But what about the Well itself? The guardians are just voices now. I don't think they can control me."

"We don't know that. It would be a gamble. And the Well might not even know anything helpful. What do you hope to learn from it?"

"The Well contained all the knowledge of Mythal's servants, right? That means ancient elves, and powerful mages, and who knows what else. At least one of them has to know something that could help us kill this demon. They knew about Corypheus's dragon, after all."

"You may be right. You are still taking a risk if you open yourself up to it. I wish I knew more about how the Well worked."

"So do I - but I'm not afraid to try it anyway. If anyone is going to stand in harm's way over this, it should be me."

"Your advisors might disagree with that, Inquisitor."

 _And would you disagree with it, too?_ I wondered, but that wasn't what I said. "Don't worry, it's not like I have some kind of death wish. But nobody else can do this for me. And I might as well get some use out of the Well's knowledge when I paid such a high price for it, right? If something goes wrong, it's not like I have anything to go back to anyway."

"You have the Inquisition," said Solas. Discomfort had begun to creep into his posture.

"For as long as that lasts. I'll stay with it as long as I'm needed, but if history is any indication, the Chantry won't allow it to exist in its current form forever. After that, maybe Mythal comes back to collect on what I owe her, or maybe I'm just out of luck."

"But Clan Lavellan-"

"Is dead. Probably." Solas's mouth fell open in shock. It was the first time I had admitted that fact to anyone outside of my council of advisors, and now that I had said it, I couldn't stop the words from tumbling out. "My Keeper sent a letter. Bandits were attacking the clan near Wycome. Leliana sent some of her agents to help, and they chased the bandits off, but then things got weird. Her people claimed that the Duke of Wycome had ordered the attack. She said she knew how to protect my clan - that she could stop him, once and for all. So I let her do it, and..." I swallowed hard and blinked back tears. "I don't really understand what happened next. Her people took out the duke, but at the same time all the humans in Wycome came down with some sort of plague. They found a way to blame elves for all of it, just like you said they always do. I suppose that some of my clanmates might have escaped the purge, but Clan Lavellan as I knew it is gone."

Solas had moved closer to me while I was speaking. I felt him watching me, but I could not bear to meet his gaze yet. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asked, sadly and without judgment.

"I got the last letter from Keeper Deshanna just before we left for the Temple of Mythal. There was never a good time to bring it up when it wouldn't have been a distraction for everyone. And after that, well…" I spread my hands helplessly. "It seemed easier not to burden anyone else with it. Besides, what gives me the right to mourn them when I've strayed so far from everything that they raised me to think and to do? How can I speak their funeral blessings when I know the gods I'd address my prayers to have never actually heard a thing I said? I can't stand in front of that altar and grieve when I know that my actions contributed to their deaths. Not when the truth of how fully I abandoned them is written all over my skin."

As I gestured at my unmarked face, I looked up into Solas's eyes and saw that they were as blurred with tears as mine. I kept talking. "My Keeper's letter said that I carry Clan Lavellan with me. She would never have written that if she could have seen what I've become. She met Falon'Din thinking I would live to uphold her legacy. She didn't know that my faith had already died, even if my body is still walking around. I'm nothing but a revenant now."

I squeezed my eyes shut and felt Solas gather me up into his arms. For long moments I didn't think about the Well, or the desire demon, or whether letting him do this was a bad idea, or anything other than the warmth of his embrace as I clung to him and sobbed. "There are other clans," he said, and I thought, _He's proposing this even though he thinks the Dalish are idiots._ Fenedhis, _I must seem even more pathetic than I thought._ "Even without the _vallaslin_ , surely one of them would take you in."

"No. You and Deshanna both taught me too well. 'We are the last of the Elvhenan, and never again shall we submit,' right? I didn't stop believing that much, at least. And that means I won't spend the rest of my life hiding behind a comforting lie."

At that, Solas seemed to realize that my tears were drying up, and that he was still holding on to me rather tightly. He let go and put a respectable distance between us once more. "You should know that I respect you tremendously," he said quietly.

" _Ma serannas_ , I think." I wiped my face with the intact sleeve of my tunic and, with a start, realized that our surroundings had changed while I wasn't looking. The light in the room was brighter, as though some unseen sun had come out from behind a cloud. Where the walls had formerly been crowded with doorways, only two now remained. Solas's purple orb bobbed in the air in front of one of them. "Wait a minute. This is different. Do you see it, too?"

"Yes. Something is easing our passage through this realm. I wonder what changed."

The answer hit me as we walked toward the broad tunnel that the wisp was guiding us into. "I think I might know. You said that demons are just spirits whose purpose has been corrupted or thwarted, aren't they?"

"That is accurate."

"I wonder if it's possible to counteract a demon's powers by exposing it to the thing that the corrupted spirit was originally meant to embody. Confront them with what they turned away from, and it weakens them. It's kind of like what I wanted to accomplish by petitioning Mythal, but on a smaller scale."

"The theory is sound. It's a shame that demons will rarely refrain from trying to kill you for long enough to put it into practice."

"But it might work here. The desire demon isn't attacking us directly, most of the time. It's letting the environment do the work, and that gives us an opening." I moved in front of him to block the door, caught up in the excitement of my new plan. "Desire, by itself, isn't evil. Desire is only harmful when it makes you believe in a false image of the thing you want, or when you lust for something so intensely that you lose sight of everything else. What casts out that kind of desire? Intimacy, and honesty, and love. The kind of love that comes from seeing someone fully and clearly, when you know every part of them and choose to love them in spite of their flaws.

"Think about what's happened in this realm. Our passage has gotten easier the more honest we've been with each other. You admitted you were afraid for my life, and then the desire demon showed up and gave enough of its plan away that we could start figuring out what to do. You told me you were upset that I'd chosen to become a templar, and right away we made more progress. And just now, I told you all those things about my clan that I hadn't told you before, and all of a sudden we know exactly where to go."

"All of that could be coincidence," said Solas.

"Not likely," I said. "This demon knows it's vulnerable to us, and that's why it's trying so hard to affect our emotions and keep us arguing instead of working together. If we were totally honest with each other - if we gave up everything we've been hiding - it probably wouldn't have any power over us anymore. What do you think?"

Solas studied me in silence for a long time, his expression guarded and thoughtful. "I think," he said at last, "that if this is the only alternative you can come up with, Inquisitor, you had better go looking for your answers in the Well of Sorrows."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What has two thumbs (for now) and screwed up the Protect Clan Lavellan war table mission really badly? THIS INQUISITOR.


	9. Desire

I moved away from Solas, too weary and defeated to continue arguing. He had made his unwillingness to go along with my plan abundantly clear, and there was no sense in trying to persuade him otherwise. "Fine," I muttered. "But when you finally explain yourself and it turns out that your big secret is that you stole some frilly cakes in Val Royeaux when you were a _da'len_ , I'm going to laugh at you."

"You are welcome to react to me as you please," said Solas evenly. He peered into the mouth of the tunnel where the purple orb from his tracking spell still bobbed. "Before you consult the Well of Sorrows, however, I would like to see if I can get us any nearer to the desire demon's lair. A relatively safe and unobstructed path to our goal seems to has appeared. If you will allow it, I believe that I can transport us there quickly and safely. Perhaps new possibilities will present themselves once we closer to the heart of the matter, so to speak."

"Are you sure that's wise? What if we meet the demon and we're not prepared?"

"I thought you were eager to fight it as soon as possible, Inquisitor."

Now it was my turn to borrow Cassandra's disgusted noise. I knew he was trying to prevent me from accessing the Well's knowledge again at all, but considering that I didn't know what dangers I might face when I did so, I couldn't think of a reason other than sheer contrariness to object to it. "Very well. Let's do it."

Solas extended his arm. "Come here," he said, and I took a few steps in his direction. "Closer."

He continued to motion me toward him until I was within the circle of his arms, my hip pressed against his. "What are you doing?" I asked, trying not to let on how flustered I suddenly felt.

"I can transport objects or people along with me when I step through the Fade, but only those in close personal contact. I wouldn't want any part of you to be left behind."

"Noted," I said. I wasn't sure what to do with the hand that wasn't holding my sword, so I placed it on his shoulder. I was intensely aware of his breath, his heartbeat, the warmth of his skin.

"Hold on," said Solas, and I tightened my grip. One of his arms slid around my waist and pulled me firmly against him. The other made a single sharp gesture, and the world constricted into a dim narrow tunnel around us. My ears were filled with the nose of rushing wind and the dizzying feeling of rapid, unpredictable movement. My stomach twisted and I squeezed my eyes shut until I felt us come to a decisive stop.

The first thing I noticed when I opened my eyes was the renewed familiarity of the place to which Solas had transported us. It was the closest imitation of Skyhold that I had seen since I had left behind the demon's version of my quarters and the rotunda. I recognized the ballroom's carved wooden pillars, the marble floor, the windows that overlooked the Frostback Mountains and the deep and starry sky above them, and knew that Solas would remember this place in the same way that I did: _This is the place where we first gave ourselves to each other. This is the place where it all changed._ The room was softly lit in red and gold. The air felt thick with lust and longing that seemed to cling to every inch of us, reminding me of everything we had once been to each other and everything that we could still be. _This is the demon talking_ , I told myself, but there were so many parts of me that didn't want to believe it.

The second thing I noticed was that Solas had not let go of me. I had twisted around to face him in transit and now both of his hands were on my hips, holding me next to him as I stood astride his thigh. "Do you feel that?" I asked.

"I feel many things right now."

"I meant the demon's influence."

"Yes. I do." He shifted his weight unconsciously, and my breath hitched as his body rubbed against mine. "It will try harder than ever now to tempt us."

I licked my lips nervously as I stared up into his eyes. "It would probably be a bad idea to give in even if I know it's really you this time, wouldn't it?"

"Yes. A very bad idea."

_"Isalan dhava ga'ma'dun."_

"And I yours." Solas bent his head closer to me. For a moment I thought he was going to kiss me in spite of it all. I fought the urge to press my lips to his before he could make the same mistake - but he pulled away. "You should dispel this magic before it can affect us any further."

" _You_ dispel it," I said. "You can do it a lot less violently than I can."

"Indeed," he said, but he made no move to cast his spell. I realized with a sinking feeling that he was enjoying this slow dance along the precipice of temptation as much as I was, and that he was just as reluctant to do anything to bring it to an end.

With an intense effort of will, I slipped out of his embrace and retreated to the center of the ballroom. "I should probably try to access the Well before the demon figures out that we're here." Before he could distract me again, I sat down, closed my eyes, and tried to empty my mind. Meditation was a crucial method for focusing and preparing my existing templar abilities and for gaining new ones, so it was easy for me to achieve the necessary state of serene concentration even with my continued yearning for Solas still present on the lower levels of my awareness.

And yet I could not locate the voice of the Well. I found the place in my mind where it had spoken to me before, from which it had issued forth incomprehensible shouting after the Arbor Wilds and the insistent, urgent whisper that had told me the secret of Corypheus's dragon. _Something_ was there, a faint pressure that reminded me that I had not been freed of my obligations to Mythal, but the knowledge I had hoped to gain from the Well's servants remained frustratingly out of reach.

"Inquisitor," said Solas, and I opened my eyes. I knew he wouldn't have interrupted me unless it were truly important. Two rage demons were rising up out of the ground, their paths converging upon us. "The desire demon knows we are here."

"It must think it can wear us down until we change our minds about making a deal with it. Too bad that it's mistaken." I picked up my sword from where I had left it and advanced on the nearest demon. Solas wove his magic again beside me, crafting barriers and tossing bolts of ice at our foes. I didn't know whether these demons were weaker than the others we had faced, or whether it was just their greater susceptibility to cold, or whether we were getting better at winning fights within our current limitations; I only knew that this time, they died swiftly and soundlessly. "Were you able to learn anything?" he asked me as the frozen shards of the second demon's form evaporated in a puff of red smoke.

"No," I said. "I couldn't hear a thing. I don't understand why it should be so difficult. It used to be that I couldn't get it to shut up."

"More of them," said Solas, pointing across the room to where three additional rage demons were materializing. "The desire demon is getting desperate."

"It's not the only one," I said as I closed the distance to our enemies.

From then on, the rage demons came in unending waves. No sooner had we defeated each group of two or three of them than a new set took their place. There was a slightly longer pause after Solas eliminated one duo with a perfectly targeted veilstrike and I dared to hope that we would see no more of them - only for four more of them to pop up. "Seriously?" I groaned.

"Take heart," said Solas as a long lash of frost shot out from his palm and whipped across the demons. "This realm can only sustain so many of them. Eventually, the desire demon will run out of allies to send at us."

"It would be nice not to have to kill them all to find enough time to focus on the _vir'abelasan_ , though." The more I mentioned the Well of Sorrows, the more troubled Solas's expression became. His evasiveness had worn all of my patience away. "Do you know something about this that you're not telling me? I'd like to avoid wasting my time."

"You may be. I don't know." He traced a complex pattern in the air with one finger, and a blue-white glyph blazed into existence on the floor between the rage demons and me. One of the demons, attracted by my belligerent posture, lunged at me but shattered into a million crystalline shards when it unthinkingly crossed the symbol.

"Appearances to the contrary, I'm listening." I sidestepped the glyph and started trading blows with one of the surviving demons. I felled it quickly and then moved on to the next.

"I didn't lie when I told you that I could not free you from the _vir'abelasan_ or calm the voices of the spirits." Solas had finally succeeded at freezing the surviving two rage demons. I descended upon them with a frenzy of cuts, hoping to kill them before they could thaw.

"But?" I made a powerful two-handed swing that sliced through both demons and cleaved them in half. No others arrived to replace them. The room had gone very silent.

Solas was breathing heavily, looking cornered. He spoke only when he seemed to realize that I wasn't going to drop the subject unless he told me the truth. "But I knew somebody who did. So I called in a favor. To...calm the Well, I suppose."

" _Fenedhis lasa._ Did you talk to Mythal? You rated a favor from _Mythal_?" His only response was to avert his eyes. I knew what that meant. "Shit, Solas, why would you do a thing like that?"

"I only wanted to help you. You must remember that I was with you just after you drank, Inquisitor. The thought of you struggling in such a way for the rest of your life...I could not countenance it. So I made my choice, and as far as I could tell, it worked. The difficulty you have faced in accessing the Well now is, I believe, an unintended side effect of my petition. I did not know that this would happen. I never expected it to matter."

My shoulders slumped. I didn't want to believe what Solas was telling me, but it explained so much that I couldn't deny it. Perversely, I still felt the seductive mood of the demon's realm all around me, fogging my perceptions, clinging to my skin. It would have been easier to give in, to forgive him reflexively and unthinkingly, to let the demon have what it wanted and forget everything else, but I had come too far to permit that to happen now. "This is why we can't be together," I said, more to myself than to him. "You say you value my freedom of choice, but whenever I make a decision that you don't like, you always find some way to undermine it."

I heard a roar like kindling igniting a bonfire and spun around to see six rage demons surrounding us - the desire demon's final attempt at cornering us. I let out an animalistic scream that I could barely believe had come from my own throat and threw myself into the fight. The demons mobbed me, and in response I cut them to pieces. I was dimly aware of Solas keeping up the barrier that surrounded me, of his spells distracting and harrying our enemies to drive them away from me when I began to get in over my head. If any of them burned or cut me, I was too lost in my battle frenzy to care. I knew nothing but all-consuming, blinding fury until the last rage demon collapsed into a pile of cinders at my feet.

My grip slackened and my sword fell to the ground with a clatter. I turned to Solas with my chest heaving with exertion and an edge of pathetic pleading in my voice. "Do you know what the worst thing about all of this is? I probably would have begged you to do it if you'd asked me first."

"I only wanted to help you," he said, nearly whispering. "Neither one of us fully grasped the consequences of our actions."

"You should have told me this a long time ago."

"You're right. I should have."

I didn't know whether I would ever get an apology from him beyond that. Nor did I know how much of the impulse I felt to gather him up in my arms, to give and take pleasure until we were beyond words and beyond anger, was genuine and how much of it came from the desire demon. I stared down at the floor, my eyes involuntarily tracing the dark, sooty lines that the rage demons had left on the marble as they moved - and then I saw it.

"Solas," I said, and pointed downward. "Do these burn marks look random to you?"

His brow wrinkled in contemplation as he backed up to take in the entire space. "No," he said.

"I'm no mage, but it reminds me of a spell glyph." For the first time since we had entered the demon's realm, I heard the echoing voices of the servants of Mythal in the deep silent corner they had claimed within my mind, murmuring _yes, good, we put this here to save you_. "And the Well of Sorrows seems to agree."

Solas crossed the ballroom to me, excitement evident on his face, all our conflicts temporarily forgotten. "You are right. This is a sigil of binding. Applied correctly, it can trap the demon. We can use this." I could see his mind already working, formulating a plan as he knelt down to trace the charred outline of the glyph. I wondered whether I should tell him that I had been right about how to counter the desire demon's powers - that without his confession, I didn't think the servants of Mythal would have been able to affect the Fade in even this relatively minor way and to grant us the boon that we needed. I wondered how much more honesty would be required to win us free of this realm. I wasn't sure how much more of it I had left to give.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations of Elvhen phrases outside the usual ones, inspired by the conlang work of [FenxShiral](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/fenxshiral):
> 
> Isalan dhava ga'ma'dun. = I want to kiss every part of your body.


	10. Pride

Solas did not have to look at the glyph on the floor for very long before he began to work his magic. He stretched his arms out in front of him and spun in a slow circle, tracing the outline of a translucent dome of silvery light that slowly settled over the room. Almost as an afterthought, and with a wistful expression on his face, he traced a simple, sharp-edged symbol in the air with his fingers. I felt the brief chill of an enchantment being dispelled and blinked rapidly as the oppressive, inescapable lust that had previously blanketed the room melted away into nothingness. I knew as well as he did that one of us should have rid the space of that influence long ago, yet a part of me still regretted the absence of our convenient excuse.

I gestured at the sparkling curtains of energy that now surrounded the sigil and us. "What did you just do?" I asked.

"It is a shield of sorts," he said. "It will fog the desire demon's perceptions and allow me to carry out our plan without being disturbed."

"And what is our plan, exactly?"

He pointed to the scorch marks on the marble slabs at his feet. "The sigil of binding is nearly complete in its current form, as the Well showed it to you. It needs only to be charged and concealed. Preventing the demon from detecting the glyph's presence is essential. If it realizes what we are doing, it will simply flee, and we will have squandered our last chance to trap it."

"I take it that concealing the glyph will be your job, then."

"Yes. I will have to hide both the sigil and the ward I will construct to keep the demon confined within this room. I may need your help to charge the sigil, too."

"All right. What else can I do before that?" I didn't like the thought of sitting idle for as long as it took him to arrange the necessary magic, of looking on helplessly without any way to contribute.

"It would be best if you tried to sleep, to recover as much of your strength as you can. After I have prepared my spells, when we are ready to attract the demon's attention to lure it into our trap, I will rely on you. It is likely that most of my energy will be consumed in reinforcing the sigil. I am not sure to what extent I will be able to aid you directly in this battle."

"You mean we're still going to have to fight it? I thought it was more like get the demon to touch the sigil and boom, no more demon."

"The glyph is very powerful, but not so powerful as that, Inquisitor. It will immobilize the demon and greatly weaken it, but I do not think it will be able to kill it outright. One of us will still have to land the killing blow in order to disperse its essence and free us from the Fade. Besides, even if the glyph is more destructive than I anticipate, someone will still have to drive the demon across it. You are better suited to that task than me. In short, at some stage of our plan, brute force will undoubtedly be required."

"Brute force? At least I can provide that much even if I can't do anything else, right?"

"I may have phrased that poorly. I assure you, your skills are vital." Solas extended his hand again with the palm facing downward. He concentrated intently on a spot just in front of his feet, and a pile of blankets coalesced out of the essence of the Fade and appeared there. "Please, Inquisitor, rest. You'll need your full strength soon enough."

I knelt to gather up the blankets. " _Ma serannas_ ," I said. It must have been a challenge for him to assert his will strongly enough to reshape the Fade in that manner, even with the wards pushing the desire demon's magic away, and he had done it for no reason other than my comfort. I was more touched by the gesture than it would be prudent to let on.

Solas watched as I made myself a bed on the floor and lay down on it, out of the way of where he would be working on the sigil but still within the silvery curtains of the wards. The blankets smelled of dust and smoke and, bizarrely, of Solas himself. "Sleep well," he said as I rolled over onto my side. "I will wake you when your assistance is needed."

"I'm sure you will," I murmured into the crook of my own elbow.

I had thought it would be difficult and strange to try to sleep inside a dream, especially with so many dangers so close at hand, but to my surprise I slipped into unconsciousness almost immediately. Constant fighting had exhausted me, and it seemed I still felt safe enough with Solas nearby to let my guard down and rest. I didn't know how much time passed before I woke to a prickling feeling running down my spine - the sensation of Solas finalizing his spells. I kept my eyes closed and remained motionless, knowing that he was right - I needed to rest for as long as possible, to bolster my strength before we carried out our plan.

Suspended in the half-lucid space between waking and dreaming, my troubled mind raced with thoughts of everything that could go wrong with our strategies, with countless possibilities of how to counteract whatever tactics the demon might use to harm us. Even if the desire demon couldn't see exactly what Solas was doing with the sigil, it had to suspect that we were plotting against it. What if it refused to take whatever bait we came up with in the first place? What if we couldn't defeat it, even with the sigil there to weaken it? What if it had overheard our discussion about the sigil before Solas had clouded its perceptions, and had already thought of a way to negate it? What if there were something we had forgotten to take into account? The more I considered our situation, the less I liked the few ways out of it that I could perceive. But Solas and I had made our choice. Now all we could do was to see it through to its result, no matter how much that might cost us in the end.

Soon I felt a light touch on my shoulder and Solas said softly, "I require your assistance." I rolled over and sat up, rubbing my eyes. "How do you feel?"

"Better," I said. I had slept soundly despite my troubled thoughts upon awakening, and as I got to my feet and picked up my sword again, I could tell that my injuries had continued to heal as I rested. "What do you need me to do?"

Solas led me to the spot where the sigil from the Well had been burned into the floor. The layers of illusion he had painted over it meant that I could barely even see its indistinct, blackened outline anymore, and even that would likely have been invisible to me had I not known where to look. "Nice work," I said.

He gave a curt nod, and hesitated before he spoke. "The sigil is complete, but it will not work until it is charged with energy somehow, of a type that can counter the desire demon's powers. The only thing that has helped us to push back against it so far is, as you said, honesty. I have not been able to come up with any reasonable alternative, and we don't have time to experiment with other methods." He paused again, unmistakably reluctant, but he pressed on. "You were right. As long as there are any secrets between us, we will always be at the mercy of desire."

"You're going to have to help me, then," I said. "I don't think I'm keeping many secrets from you now. You already know that if you hadn't left me, I would have given up everything for you." Yet even as I spoke those words I knew I have never said them aloud to Solas or to anyone, and that it was well past time that I set them free. "Even my clan. Even the Dalish as a whole. Even the Inquisition, if it came to that. You were more important. Why do you suppose I hardly even had to think about it when you offered to remove my _vallaslin_? I didn't care at the time what anyone else might say, or what I was cutting myself off from. I thought it wouldn't matter because I thought I would always have you." My throat felt as if it were closing off, crumpling my voice up into a hoarse, desolate whisper. "You were my backup plan."

This time, Solas did not move to embrace me as he had done before. He seemed to understand that no comforting touch or soothing words could assuage this, and it showed in the devastated acceptance of his own fate that I saw written all over his face. "There are so many things I should have done differently," he said, strained and low. "Things that might have shown you what a mistake it was to trust in me. I wish that I had told you sooner."

"Then tell me now!" I said, more forcefully than I had intended. As I had given up the last of my secrets to him, I had sensed the magic he had spoken of, had seen the outline of the sigil shimmer faintly beneath its concealing veils. He was right - without the power of honesty, our plan was doomed to failure. Judging by the way he squeezed his hands into fists and took a long, slow breath, he knew it as well as I did.

"I am not the man I let you believe I was," Solas said. "I have told you so many tales of Elvhenan, of the elves as they were in the time before the fall. I allowed you to believe that I had seen these things in the Fade, in preserved fragments of the memories of those who experienced the events in question. But that isn't the case. I know because I witnessed them for myself - because I lived them. I didn't only see them in dreams. I was there."

I felt the sigil locking into place and knew that he was telling the truth, no matter how improbable it sounded. "How is that possible?" I said, making no effort to disguise my shock.

"The Tevinter would call me a _somniari_ \- a dreamer. I told you already that I can remain in the Fade indefinitely, if I so choose. After I - that is, when I saw the first evidence of Arlathan's fall, and knew that it could not be averted, I chose to enter _uthenera_ and spare myself that tragedy. I slept there for years, for Ages and longer, lost in the dreams of others. There I remained until the pressure of the waking world became too great to ignore. So I awakened. And I joined you."

I stared at him, struck speechless, waiting for an explanation that I knew would never come. There were so many questions I could have asked, but he would answer none of them. He had told me all the truth that was required to charge the sigil: no more, no less. It was not in his nature to do otherwise. For all the immense weight of his astonishing confession, it was a miniscule fraction of the explanation he still owed me, and that I could only hope he would make good on someday. And so I did not beg for details I knew he wouldn't give. Instead I said, "But you abandoned them."

"If I had not done so, I would have died like the rest of the ancient Elvhen, and never have been able to aid the Inquisition. I would never have known you." There was a slight hitch in his breath that suggested that the last possibility might have been, in its way, as great a tragedy as the loss of Arlathan itself. He turned his back to me and began to pace the perimeter of the room, checking the spells and wards as a convenient excuse not to have to look at me anymore. "There. It's done. Are you ready?"

"No," I said quietly, struggling to regain my focus. I knew I would need every ounce of clarity that I could muster in the battle to come.

Solas gave me a thin, weak smile. "Nor am I. But there is no time to do this but the present." He glanced off to one side, concentrating, and the silver barrier that had hidden us from the desire demon's sight wavered and blinked out. "Shall we let our enemy know that we are ready?"

I walked toward him, steeling myself against the knowledge of everything I still needed to do. "How did you intend to accomplish that?"

He rested his hands on my waist and pulled me against him. I had always known that he would. I wrapped my arms around his neck and tilted my head up to gaze into his eyes, which were brimming with a mixture of relief and regret. My own eyes gradually closed as he leaned down to kiss me, just as I had longed for him to do ever since I had torn apart the shape of his temptation and told him how much I still needed him in spite of the history and the lies that had come between us. When our lips met I wanted to stay forever in that endless stolen moment in which nothing had ever mattered except the unbreakable barrier of our arms around each other, this private mystic circle that contained the love we still could not deny. But it ended, as everything must, and I heard him say in hushed tones, " _Ma vhenan_ , please believe me that no matter what happens now, I am truly sorry for all of this."

"I'm sorry, too," I said. Then I stepped out of his grip, threw back my head, and shouted into the rafters, "Hey, demon! In case that wasn't enough to get your attention, you should know that I'm ready to make a deal with you now!"


	11. Pull of the Abyss

Soundlessly, without warning, the desire demon materialized between Solas and me. Its dark, beady eyes glittered triumphantly. "I thought you'd never see reason," it said. Then it seemed to sense the magic that Solas had tried to conceal and bristled slightly as its gaze followed the invisible curve of the ward that surrounded it. "And yet you would try to confine me even further. What is the meaning of this?"

"His idea, not mine." I pointed at Solas, who had gone very still as he listened with his mouth hanging open. "Besides, as far as I'm concerned it doesn't hurt to make sure you stay in one place while you hear what I have to say."

The demon crossed its arms beneath its substantial breasts. "I'm listening."

"You're lucky that I don't really want to fight you," I said. "I'm kind of sick of killing demons, which is good for you, because I know that you don't want to die. So I propose a deal instead. I'll let you go free, and leave your anchor in the physical world alone too - if you'll tell me everything that Solas told you while he thought you were me."

The demon's plump lips pulled away from its sharp teeth in a cruel and avaricious grin. "Intriguing how you act as if you're the one who gets to make the bargains here, templar."

"You told me you're trapped here too. Your only way out is through me, whether that's by helping me or by getting reacquainted with my mark." I held up my left hand and let a few long arcs of green light trickle out from the Anchor to spit and crack where they met the air - not enough to harm the demon, but enough to make it lean away from me.

"But your wizard's spell has locked you in here as well, and he does not seem to agree with the course of action you suggest." Indeed, Solas had stumbled away from me and fallen to his knees on the other side of the room, wearing an expression of total, disbelieving defeat. "How will you break through his barriers without his help?"

"Did you already forget that I'm a templar? I can dispel his magic with a touch. He claims his spells don't have a weakness, but I know better than that. I'm sure that you and me and the mark, working together, can find some way to make an opening."

The demon tapped a clawed finger against its plump lips, its brow wrinkling in deep thought. "An intriguing possibility. And yet I wonder, what made you change your mind after you rejected me so many times before?" It didn't sound entirely convinced by my proposal yet, but at the very least, it was tempted.

I jerked my head in Solas's direction. "I realized he's never going to tell me the whole story of who he is and what he knows. _Fenedhis_ , it wasn't until it was a matter of life and death that he told me anything at all. I'm tired of secrets and lies. If he won't give me the truth, the only thing left for me to do is to get it from you."

Solas looked up at me with wide, wet eyes. "Don't do this," he said. For everything he'd said earlier about all of his grand intentions to prevent me from making another mistake, he seemed completely unwilling to actually do anything to stop me from making this one.

I forced myself not to turn away from him. "You left me no choice," I said, and hoped he would understand what I meant.

The desire demon watched us, swaying in midair in an eager, lustful rhythm. "All right," it said. "I'll tell you what I know if you'll set me free. But I want him to stay behind."

"No," I said. "I might still need to make use of his skills. At the very least, if what you're going to tell me is as awful as he keeps making me think it is, my friends and I have the right to decide what to do with him." I brandished the sword I still held. "Or we can fight, if you'd rather."

The demon hissed and bared its teeth, gathering purple energy around its talons in a futile attempt to intimidate me. But I stood firm, never flinching, until it growled once more and said, "Fine." It was just as Solas had always said: demons, like any other type of spirit, were intrinsically bound to their own unchangeable nature. An entity like this one could no sooner reject an even slightly advantageous deal with a willing victim than it could reject the call of desire in the first place.

"Good." I spread my arms out wide and gave the demon a calm, accepting smile. "A kiss to seal our bargain would traditionally be what comes next, right?"

"Close enough," said the demon. Its own smile was now wider and more vicious than ever before. It beckoned me with both hands and glided sensually toward me -

\- And directly over the binding sigil that Solas and I had worked so hard to charge and conceal.

The spell detonated with a soundless, bone-rattling explosion that I felt in my guts and in my teeth. The demon screamed, a deafening and terrifying wail of betrayal, and thrashed against the invisible bonds that I knew it would find nearly impossible to break. "Kill it now!" I shouted to Solas. He was already rising to his feet, all of his sadness replaced by grim determination as he gathered his power to him for what we both knew was our last chance at victory.

With all my might, I drove the tip of my sword into the demon's abdomen. Its shrieking intensified, and it jerked around violently in the air. The wild, unpredictable motion forced my sword out of its body. The demon backhanded me with more strength than I had expected it to be able to summon, and I tumbled to the floor and skidded into a pillar. As I picked myself up, I saw and felt Solas weaving a complex web of magic around us, dismissing the now-redundant ward around the room and the unnecessary spells of concealment, replacing them with barriers and other subtle defenses. But he still seemed distracted by the need to continue feeding power into the sigil, and I knew he had been right when he had said that it would be my duty to strike the killing blow.

The demon shot a bright gout of fire out of one of its palms. Unnatural heat washed over me and seared away most of my barrier. I pressed forward through the flames and swung my sword at the demon again, opening a long gash in one of its outstretched arms before I danced beyond its reach. It switched to electricity, then to ice, but I avoided the lightning bolt by ducking behind a pillar, and whatever mysterious protection I had gained from the shards I'd collected meant that the blast of cold barely chilled me. Each time the demon attacked me, I struck back and felt it weakening little by little. I felt an exultant smile spreading across my own face. This was a fight I could win.

But the demon knew that, too. It keened at a high pitch I hadn't heard it emit before, and other demons began to phase through the walls and floor. This ragged assortment of fearlings, terror demons, rage demons, and even a despair demon or two represented the desire demon's last attempt to defeat us - and now that Solas had been forced to drop the ward, it might even work. Solas must have seen the fear in my eyes, because he called to me from across the battlefield, "Focus on the desire demon, Inquisitor! If we can kill it and escape, the others won't matter."

I knew his strategy was our best and only option, so I turned my back on our other, lesser enemies even as fearlings spat venom and terror demons crowded in around me and a despair demon's ray of frost punched through my barrier and sent an unearthly chill through my entire being. I concentrated on the despair demon just long enough to stun it and the rage demons that flanked it with a templar's wordless, magic-denying prayer to faceless gods, and trusted Solas to finish them off if he needed to. But there was still something else I could do to make my job easier.

I dodged another blast of flame, ducked under the desire demon's flailing arms, and pressed my left hand firmly against its midriff. The mark roared to life the instant that I gave it the first taste of freedom. A rift opened, partially anchored within the demon's form. The lesser demons that had converged upon me, attracted by taunts or feigned weakness, were caught up in the flares of green energy as well. The rift was taking them all apart.

Yet the desire demon refused to give up. It extended its hands toward me again, steeling itself against the tumult of the rift, and emitted a ray of roiling darkness that caught me square in the chest. No barrier could have stopped it, nor could any shard's power have diminished it. It tore at my life-force itself and left behind only a frigid, terrifying numbness. I couldn't withstand many more attacks like that one, and the demon knew it. I slashed back at it too weakly, too slowly. Its endurance was also fading, its motions becoming even more erratic as blackish-purple ichor oozed from its numerous wounds - but I could tell by the wicked smirk on its face that unless I managed to conjure something truly devastating, it was going to outlast me.

Too soon, the rift I had made sealed itself shut again. It had obliterated many of the lesser demons that menaced me, but not enough. They closed in on me from all directions, chipping tirelessly away at my defenses. I tried to summon the strength to swing my sword in an unexpected counterattack that would throw them off their guard, or the faith to cry out to the heavens and drive them all back with nothing but my will, but I couldn't do it. As I fought to keep the demons from overwhelming me, I searched for Solas and found him slamming the remaining despair demon into the ground. He was nearly as battered and bloodied as I was, and exhaustion showed plainly in his every movement - but at the moment, none of the demons were paying him any mind, so focused were they on killing me. His eyes met mine for a fraction of a second, and then I saw his hands begin to move in the patterns of another spell. I recognized the shape of it and understood what he needed from me, just as I had done so many times before. _So. This is our last chance. It had better work._

I began again to shout at the demons that surrounded me - curses, invective, animalistic wails, total nonsense, anything to keep their attention focused on me instead of on Solas. A terror demon lunged in from my blind side and knocked me flat on my back. I struggled to sit up as my foes closed in around me; standing up again was beyond my capabilities. But in my peripheral vision I could see that Solas was almost finished with his spell. I gripped my sword with white knuckles and waited. It wouldn't be long now.

The desire demon loomed over me. It swiped downward with its claws and I responded with a quick, unanticipated parry that probably cost it a few fingers. "You pitiful fool," it spat, clutching its mangled hand. "If you only knew what your precious wizard had planned for you, you wouldn't fight so hard on his behalf. You'd beg me to take his soul and spare you from the pain he wants to inflict upon you. And you think he loves you? He's going to destroy you."

Solas made a slight, almost imperceptible gesture. Green and black energy flew from his fingertips and coalesced into a tiny, howling point of magic - a miniature rift of his own, not as large or as destructive as what my mark could produce, but with a gravity strong enough to pull the demons toward it all the same. He had positioned it perfectly between the desire demon and me, shielding me from the worst of the spell's effects while the demon was yanked inexorably toward my upraised sword.

The blade punctured the demon's chest, and the rift's pull yanked it along the entire sharp length of silverite. I anchored both hands on the hilt and tightened my grip, feeling the edge scrape along bone and the tip punch through its back with a dull shock. I twisted my sword around as the demon screamed in agony, knowing that this was the last attack I would get the chance to make. "He already has," I said, so softly that I doubted either Solas or the demon could hear me over the din of battle.

The desire demon shuddered and convulsed. Its cried died down to a muted whimper and then ceased. With relief, I watched its body break apart into wisps of purple smoke that dissipated back into the Fade. The walls and floor and ceiling of the ballroom began to crumble, sending the surviving demons tumbling away into the abyss without a sound. The desire demon's realm was falling apart around us, just as Solas and I had believed it would. I cast around the disintegrating room for him as I felt blackness closing in, but he was hidden by the gathering chaos. Then I was falling backwards into the dark embrace of oblivion and whatever awaited me on the other side of unconsciousness.


	12. Dispel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second-to-last paragraph of this chapter contains what I suppose is a very minor Trespasser spoiler. It's about the setup of events rather than the outcome, though, and you can probably skim it and be fine (or skip it altogether without missing important plot) if you're worried.

I woke from sleep in an instant, bolting upright in my bed with a strangled cry of alarm. I groped for my sword in the bottomless night that always blanketed the Frostbacks in the hours just before dawn, but before I could reach it a hand covered mine. I heard Solas say, "You're safe, Inquisitor. We're not in the Fade anymore." With a snap of his fingers, he kindled a flame upon the candle on my bedside table. The faint, warm light was barely enough to illuminate his tense, worried form where he perched on the edge of the mattress.

 _How did he get up here so quickly?_ I wondered. The whole thing reminded me too much of the demon's failed attempt at tempting me. "How do I know this is real?" I asked.

"I thought you might ask that," he said. "Remember that the demon would not know that while we were hidden from its senses in the ballroom, I told you I am one of the ancient Elvhen."

I took a few deep breaths and did my best to hold his gaze. Solas was right - the desire demon wouldn't have known that he had shared that information with me. His obvious reluctance to remind me of that fact, contrasted with the demon's eagerness to reveal all of his secrets to me within the parameters of our aborted bargain, was similarly convincing. I felt my heart hammering in my chest, looked down at my body and saw no evidence of the many injuries that my astral form had sustained in the Fade, and knew that I was safe. I sank back against the headboard of the bed. " _Enaste,_ " I said without meaning to.

Solas was not nearly so relaxed. I could feel his unease in the weight of his hand where it still rested on mine. "Tell me," he said with some reluctance, as if he were convincing himself that he really wanted to know the answer to whatever he was about to ask me. "Did you really intend to make a deal with the desire demon in exchange for my secrets when you called upon it?"

"No," I said. "It was a ruse from the start. I couldn't think of anything more convincing to get the demon into the room with us and lure it across the sigil." I forced myself not to look away from him as I resolved to speak the rest of what his question had brought to my mind. He had been honest with me at last, and I owed him the same sort of truth. "But I would be lying if I told you that some part of me hadn't considered it. I don't think the demon would have been tempted if I hadn't been at least a little tempted, too."

The glimpse of Solas's face that I caught before he turned away from me, cloaking himself in shadows, reminded me of the sorrow that had overwhelmed him on the night that he had left me in the cave. " _Ar ame ir abelas_ ," he said, and I didn't have to ask what he was sorry for. This was an apology for everything he had done and for everything that he had yet to do, and no less heartfelt for its lack of specificity.

" _Ma melava halani,_ "I replied. " _Ir tas'abelas_."

We sat in silence for long moments until Solas hesitantly removed his hand from mine. "We must finish what we started," he said. He held out his palm again and that familiar wisp of light appeared - golden and white this time, and glowing more brightly than any of the other tracking orbs he had conjured in the Fade. "The demon's anchor isn't far from us now. Let's find it and end this."

I made Solas wait just outside the door to my quarters while I cleaned up, changed out of my sweat-soaked pajamas, and swallowed a draught of elfroot to calm the pounding headache that was my only physical reminder of all the dangers I had faced in the desire demon's realm. Then I followed him through Skyhold as I had done once before in the waking world, as I had done countless times in my dreams. The keep was dark and silent, with most of its torches and lanterns long since extinguished for the night. The hearths glowed faintly with red embers that had spent hours going slowly cold and grey. Everyone else was still asleep. I could only hope that their experience of the Fade on this night was more peaceful and enjoyable than mine had been.

The orb blazed even brighter as we crossed the main hall. It flared dramatically in front of a door that I rarely used, between the rotunda and the corridor that led to Josephine's study and the war room. Solas pushed it open and led me down the stairs and through the pitch-black vaults and cellars of Skyhold's lowest levels. The orb bobbed along ahead of us and into the small, disused secondary library where we kept the texts that Dorian and the other mages and scholars rarely found cause to refer to. It came to a hovering rest above one tattered, cloth-bound treatise that appeared to have been forgotten on a high shelf.

Solas stood on tiptoe and pulled the volume down. "'The Randy Dowager welcomes the new year by scandalizing the old, with the collected romantic epic _The Horned Ones_ , being a tale of conquest, both of nation and of heart,'" he read aloud. "'Demands are satisfied as bronze giants share their explosive passions.' Where in the world could this have come from?"

I felt my face burning and knew that my blush had to be spreading all the way to the tips of my ears. "It was me," I said. Solas's only response was a raised eyebrow, so I continued. "I found it on the ground in Val Royeaux a few months back. Dalish habits die hard. You never know what will be useful or how, so you pick it all up and take it with you if you can. Besides, there were some other installments of it down here already. I hate leaving a collection incomplete."

"Evidently." Solas opened the _Randy Dowager Quarterly_ to a random page and read out loud again. "'"I shall never give in to your scandalous advances, you beast!" Lavinia cried, her ivory bosom heaving with emotion. Yet even as she retreated from the horned one's strong and powerful embrace, her gaze was drawn to the rippling muscles of his bare arms and chest and to the outline of his turgid member, just visible through the thin fabric of his striped trousers. How she ached to take every inch of his enormous qunarihood within her velvet walls, to submit to the waves of crashing ecstasy as he claimed her! But what would her father and her fiancé say, if they knew how deeply she longed to admit this savage invader into the most secret caverns of her virgin treasure?'" He looked up from the paper, struggling not to laugh. "Qunarihood?"

"Hey, I don't write this stuff."

The hint of a teasing smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "Does the Iron Bull know of your particular proclivities in erotic literature, Inquisitor?"

"Oh, come on, don't tell him. I'll never hear the end of it. And why are you so amused by this anyway? Is it too shocking for the sensibilities of ancient elves to countenance?"

"In the time of Arlathan, my people invented perversions you can scarcely dream of."

 _Mind showing me some?_ was on the tip of my tongue, but instead I said, "This trouble with the desire demon is all my fault. I'm sorry I brought the book here in the first place. I should have known better."

"How could you have? You said that you acquired this, uh, _document_ months ago, but to my knowledge, no one in Skyhold experienced any unusual demonic activity until tonight. I theorize that the desire demon anchored to this object while it was greatly weakened from some battle or another, and remained in a dormant state, unable to be sensed by anyone, until it had regained its strength by drawing power from the emotions around it. In case you haven't noticed, there is rather a lot of desire in this keep. Nobody could have foreseen this, not even me. Don't blame yourself."

"I won't, then."

"In any event..." Solas picked up the _Randy Dowager Quarterly_ , holding it away from his body with his thumb and forefinger squeezing it by one corner. He snapped the fingers of his other hand and a tiny spark caught on the edge of the pages. In an instant, the dry parchment had gone up in flames, leaving behind a fine dusting of cinders that drifted lazily down to the floor. The spell-wisp also burned itself out, plunging the library into total darkness. The windowless, subterranean room lacked even the miniscule amount of light that elves like us would have been able to see by. "There. It's done."

My knees went weak as the terror and exhaustion of the past several hours caught up with me all at once, and I leaned against him for support without thinking. " _Ma serannas_ ," I said. "I don't know what I would have done without you."

"Died, more than likely," said Solas matter-of-factly. His arms had slipped around my waist as easily and unconsciously as ever, as if nothing we had said or done before this had mattered, as if nothing at all had ever changed between us.

"Don't rub it in."

"That is not what I am doing. Had you perished, the rest of us would not have been far behind."

"Because the world needs the Anchor."

"Yes. But more than that, Inquisitor, this world needs _you_ to steer it through everything that is yet to come."

"And do you include yourself in 'this world?'"

"In this particular instance? Yes."

Things were easier in the dark for me, just like they were easier in the Fade for Solas. I kissed him before either one of us could object, feeling his lips and his body respond, and understood as surely as he did that this would never happen again. For all that we had sworn that our romance was over, neither of us wanted our last memories of intimacy to be tainted by a desire demon's influence. This was our way to reclaim the purity of real emotion, to honor it for what it had been and what it still was - and to say farewell.

The force of his kisses propelled me backwards into the edge of the small reading desk that rested against one wall. I lifted myself up to sit on top of it and wrapped my legs around his hips to pull him closer to me, trying not to think of how the desire demon in his dream had done the same thing. As we began to lean gradually backward together over the surface of the desk, he whispered, "A moment, please," and shifted away from me. I was about to ask him whether I had done something wrong when I realized that my eyes had adjusted to the dark, and that I could now barely see the outline of his shape moving between the desk and the shelves. He was relocating the books and scrolls that we might have crumpled or crushed in the throes of passion.

I reached out to pull him back into the orbit of my embrace and laughed against the sensitive skin of his neck. "I see. Rescuing the books just in case there's a sequel to _The Horned Ones_ in there somewhere?"

"If there is, I'm saving it for you." He kissed me again and his hands slid up beneath the hem of my tunic to caress my bare torso underneath it. We removed each other's clothing unhurriedly, taking the time as we shed each garment to explore what it had concealed with lips and fingertips and teeth, our bodies finding one another in the darkness with the unerring precision that our eyesight lacked. I tried to brand every moment, every touch, every sensation into my memory, knowing that after this night no others would come to supplant them.

I didn't know how long it took before we were both entirely nude. The reading desk was pitched at the perfect height and angle to allow me to recline on its wooden surface, which Solas had helpfully cleared of books, and present my entire self to his hands and mouth. He seemed to spend an eternity on my breasts alone, until my hips were lifting uncontrollably up from the desk and I whimpered, "Please."

" _Ma nuvenin_ ," he replied. He kissed his lazy, deliberate way along my belly and my thighs and knelt down in the pile of discarded clothing at his feet. When he finally pressed his mouth between my legs, I was astonished and a little disappointed by how quickly I came. Solas seemed to feel the same, because he did not lift his head or withdraw his fingers until he had drawn a second trembling climax out of me.

I heard a rustle as he rose shakily from the floor and leaned against me, felt him thrusting himself hard and urgent between my folds, around my entrance. I twined my quivering limbs around him and pulled him further down, nibbling at his ear, breathing out, " _Garas, aman na'mis._ " He slipped into me effortlessly and with a soft moan, taking up a slow rhythm that I knew was meant to prolong his pleasure and mine alike.

He lasted longer than I would have imagined possible. When he finally came, muffling a shout with the bare flesh of my shoulder, I was improbably approaching the brink again myself. I locked my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist, pushing my heels into his buttocks to keep him inside me even as he twitched and softened, and gasped out, "Wait." As I rolled my hips against his with sharp, desperate motions, he somehow slid one of his hands in between us. His long fingers found my center as unerringly as metal finds a lodestone, and suddenly I was coming again, crying out wantonly into the pitiless darkness until our movements slowed and then stopped.

Tenderly, Solas freed himself from my grip and guided me down to lie beside him on the floor. Neither one of us said a word. We both knew that when we broke that fragile silence it would be the end. Instead, I dozed lightly and let myself be held, so enfolded by the heat of his body that I barely noticed the chill of the dusty stone floor that I lay upon.

But some time later, the distant tolling of a bell ultimately roused me from hazy half-sleep. I pushed myself up on one elbow. Thin grey daylight was now filtering down the stairs from the upper levels of the keep. " _Fenedhis_ ," I said. "I think I'm supposed to be meeting with the war council already."

Solas sat up and watched me as I hastily prepared myself for the audience I was already late for. I cleaned up the evidence of our lovemaking as best as I was able, retrieved my scattered clothing, and rapidly dressed. "Will you inform me of your chosen strategy when you have arrived at it?" he asked as I straightened my tunic.

"Of course," I said. "As long as you can keep up with the rest of us, old man."

He chuckled at my joke, but then a more serious expression spread across his face. "Please don't tell the others about that yet. At the present time I fear it would only be a distraction."

"I won't," I said. He was probably right - and anyway, I didn't want to share his secret with anyone else until I'd had the chance to ask him the dozens of questions that his confession had raised. I wished I had more time to talk to him about them now, but I was already late for my meeting with the advisors, and I wasn't sure if anything good would happen if I stayed.

" _Ma serannas_. Regardless, you should know that it remains my intention to stay with you until the end."

"I know." I crouched down next to him and fondly traced my fingers along the side of his face. Before I knew what I was doing I was kissing him again, a long and light and lingering thing that I only broke away from when I began to lose my balance. "I need to go. We'll talk more soon."

" _Dareth shiral_ ," said Solas as I stood up and walked away. At the bottom of the stairs I turned once more to see him sitting perfectly motionless on the cold flagstones of the lightless room, naked but for his wolf's jaw amulet and entirely unconcerned about what anyone might think of that fact. I would wonder, later on, if he had known that he was truly saying goodbye to me in that moment - that the next time we spoke it would be with Corypheus dead and the orb shattered at his feet, and after that at the center of an _eluvian_ maze with the mark slowly killing me and the greatest of his secrets laid bare between us. Would I have said more or less, or done anything differently, had I known all that was yet to come? But I didn't, so I only gave him a nod in farewell and ran up the cellar stairs into everything that came next.

Later on I would also wonder what would have happened if I had taken the demon's deal. If Solas had told it the truth, if I had learned of his greatest secrets before the last battle, would it have made any difference? Speculation was pointless. I was still a templar, an enemy of demons and of corrupted magic, marked by lyrium and fate and whatever passed for my own gods. I could no sooner give in to that temptation and remain myself than Solas could change his nature - or than any spirit in the Fade could do so. I myself had set the snare in which I was now imprisoned. I had stepped into it willingly the first time I had kissed him in the Fade. And in the long nights yet to come, in which I contemplated what I might give up to escape from my chosen confinement, the thought that would always bring me the greatest comfort was the knowledge that Solas was also equally trapped by bonds of his own making. _Ar lasa mala revas,_ he had said, but he had lied. We were tied to each other eternally now, companions in an endless dream. It would take many more years before I understood both the promise and the price of a life no longer tied to his will - before I understood how much it would cost both of us to begin, at last, to awaken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations of Elvhen phrases outside the usual ones, inspired by the conlang work of [FenxShiral](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/fenxshiral):
> 
> Enaste = here, intended as something like "thank the gods"  
> Ar ame ir abelas. = I am so sorry.  
> Ma melava helani. Ir tas'abelas. = You have spent your time to help me (here, a very familiar and intimate form of "thank you"). I'm sorry, too.  
> Garas, aman na'mis. = Come, I will sheathe your blade. (in FenxShiral's words, "the pretty elvish version of, essentially, 'Stick your dick in me.'")

**Author's Note:**

> Story title taken from the song ["In A Sweater Poorly Knit" by MewithoutYou](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4g-3WRXIts).
> 
> Thanks to everyone who came along with me for this, my first time experimenting with posting a multi-chapter work in progress. I've got one more story left to write in this series, but before I do that, I'm going to spend NaNoWriMo writing a draft of a long Solas-centric work, semi-related to this one, that I've been pondering for a long time now. If you're reading this and you plan to participate in 2015, [add me as a buddy on the NaNo site and we can cheer each other on.](http://nanowrimo.org/participants/gamerfic) :D
> 
> Thank you again for reading!


End file.
